{"title":"Yoga for veterans and military personnel: in conversation with David Venus","authors":"Audrey Reeves","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2019.1678324","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2019.1678324","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT David Venus, a former physical training instructor in the Royal Marine Corps, now works as a full-time movement therapist and yoga instructor. Audrey Reeves, an assistant professor in political science at Virginia Tech, crossed path with David in 2017, while completing a yoga teacher training. Audrey and David met again at David’s home studio on the Northumberland coast, where he lives with his partner Claire and their four-year-old. As Audrey arrives, Claire is printing off David’s typed answers to an email sent by Audrey. ‘Because of PTSD, David’s memory sometimes fails him’, she explains. ‘He answered your questions in his own time so he could get the dates right’. From the upper floor, the blue ribbon of the sea is visible in the distance. Soon, David and I sit on a rug and resume the conversation started by email.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23337486.2019.1678324","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47125372","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}
{"title":"Synching the martial body: poetic encounters with Finnish cadets","authors":"S. Hast","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2020.1861738","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2020.1861738","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this paper, I engage poetically with embodied experiences of Finnish cadets in physical training, bringing the study of body technique, social emotions and militarism together. I focus on the cadets’ experiences in collective movement, in particular when synchronizing and attuning with each other. I identify three bodies – minded, machine and combat – as descriptions of being part of the synching collective. I propose that the interviewed Finnish cadets associate synchrony in their training with 1) the capacity and need to think with their bodies, 2) suffering as their social glue in an instrumentalist view of the body 3) techniques for surviving combat. I approach the material I collected in fieldwork through a poetics that echoes the cadets’ articulations through my own body, as well as writing speaking directly to cadets in the second person.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23337486.2020.1861738","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45636505","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}
{"title":"Big Hole: Excavating intimate histories of a nuclear homefront","authors":"Rebecca Kastleman","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2020.1850119","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2020.1850119","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Growing up in the woods of Chatham County, North Carolina, among families who had decided to go back to the land, I imagined that nuclear conflict was worlds away—until I discovered that a top-secret federal communications facility had been hiding in my family’s backyard. This covert facility, known as the ‘Big Hole’ and operated by AT&T, is one of a small network of ‘continuity of government’ sites that were designed to shelter top federal officials in the event of a nuclear attack. After a period of disuse, the Big Hole site has recently come back online. This essay traces my attempt to understand its purpose and place in the terrain of my childhood home. As I show, the persistent growth of U.S. domestic defense infrastructure is at least partially reversible at the level of local government, for citizens possess the power to check the expansion of these secret installations. Even so, the infrastructure of defense place limits on individuals’ ability to understand and even to access their own lived environments. These military architectures have become pervasive and enduring features of our living landscape.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23337486.2020.1850119","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44705065","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}
{"title":"Knowledge in and of military operations: enriching the reflexive gaze in critical research on the military","authors":"A. Danielsson","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2020.1835341","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2020.1835341","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article analyses the recent military ‘turn to reflexivity’ in relation to current reflexive commitments in critical studies of the military. With reflexivity, military organizations have begun to inquire into its own role as a producer and user of knowledge, and into the constitutive effects of knowledge in and on the world. A reflexive concern with the conditions and effects of knowledge has thus made militaries sensitive to the epistemic dimensions of military force. The broader socio-political implications of the military’s attention to epistemics, in terms of how knowledge may constitute and bring into being novel socio-political orderings, make it an urgent task to explore this development in relation to the reflexive state of critical research on the military. The first argument that I make in the article is that existing reflexive commitments in critical military studies are conceptually able to target scholarly-military epistemic interactions and the constitutive effects thereof, but less able to address epistemic distinctions in terms of how knowledge is produced and how different conditions shape the content of knowledge. This, however, is what is needed to critically address the military reflexive development. Based on this, I argue secondly that a fruitful broadening and enriching of the reflexive gaze may be achieved by further taking reflexivity in a Bourdieusian direction – a move that ultimately works complementary to existing reflexive commitments in critical military studies.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23337486.2020.1835341","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48583069","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}
{"title":"How researching with the RAF Reaper community exposed my own suppressed trauma and what I would do differently next time","authors":"Peter Lee","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2020.1841455","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2020.1841455","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT It is common for service personnel and military veterans to experience trauma and its ongoing effects. It is also common for that trauma to go unacknowledged and untreated, with personal denial being the first major obstacle to overcome. Professor Peter Lee reflects on coming to terms with his past Iraq War experiences as a military chaplain, prompted by the unexpected resurfacing of overwhelming emotions triggered during a research project more than a decade later. He concludes by offering recommendations for other researchers to consider, especially if they have experienced prior trauma: either in the armed forces or elsewhere.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23337486.2020.1841455","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43955631","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}
{"title":"Naming, but not shaming: the war names phenomenon, 1914-1920","authors":"Mark Connelly, Jessamy Carlson","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2020.1821534","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2020.1821534","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Between 1914 and 1920, over 1600 children were given first names of key battles, geographical locations throughout the fronts of the FWW and key military personnel. Hundreds more were given war-related first and second middle names in the same time period. This article explores the geographical and social patterns of this naming trend. Whilst a number of the children covered by this research had a close connection to an individual (usually a man) in service, the piece also explores the anomaly of the use of Verdun as a name, which proved particularly popular in South Wales. It also explores public discourse about the war names trend through an examination of newspaper commentary asking what this reveals about popular attitudes to the conflict and its impact on family life.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23337486.2020.1821534","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41615894","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}
{"title":"Liberal militarism and republican restraints on power: the problems of unaccountable interventions for American democracy","authors":"K. Blachford","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2020.1835342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2020.1835342","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The average American citizen no longer directly pays, fights or votes for war. The war on terror and the rise of debt fuelled militarism has detached the average American citizen from the use of force. This has left American elites largely unaccountable and able to use military force with minimal oversight. This paper examines how democratic peace theory has neglected the changing nature of modern warfare. It further calls for a return to the consideration of republican restraints on power. A belief in the importance of individuals playing a role as active citizens was fundamental to Kant’s arguments in Perpetual Peace. Modern democratic peace theory largely ignores the routine use of military force and the implications this has on the role of American citizens as a check on power.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23337486.2020.1835342","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43049600","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}
{"title":"Resilient and entrepreneurial military spouses: neoliberalization meets militarization","authors":"L. Spanner","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2020.1815385","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2020.1815385","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Feminist scholarship on gender and militarization reveals how militaries rely on the commitments and contributions of military spouses on the basis of essential gender norms and exploitative gender relations. Strategies to secure these contributions and power dynamics shift in response to political, social and cultural pressures and require feminist interrogation if they are to be undone. Thus, this paper asks, how is the Canadian military securing and exploiting the labour and loyalty of military spouses in support of operational effectiveness? Based on original interview data with spouses and an analysis of military family support initiatives and programmes, I argue that neoliberal logics are combining with militarization to secure and deepen the gendered expectations of military spouses by the state. Through neoliberal logics of individual responsibility, flexibility and resourcefulness, military spouses are told that they can be successful and assure their wellbeing by enhancing their ability to adapt, survive, and thrive military life. This differs from other strategies of militarization, which appeal to patriotism and devotion to one’s husband. In particular, state initiatives of support in resilience and entrepreneurialism – qualities of neoliberal citizenship – combine to generate as ideal the proactive military spouse, who invests in her capacity to adhere to the gendered requirement of military life, and sees this as a means to ensure her wellbeing. The neoliberal logics upon which contemporary processes of militarization are taking place encourage and require that military spouses create the conditions that enable them to better perform feminized practices of labour in support of the Canadian Armed Forces.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23337486.2020.1815385","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49248292","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}
{"title":"Challenging the ‘normal’: curious women conscientious objectors to military service in the male conscription system in Turkey","authors":"Demet Aslı Çaltekin","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2020.1815384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2020.1815384","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article investigates how gender roles shape, normalize, and reinforce militarism and vice versa. Drawing on in-depth interviews with nineteen conscientious objectors, it explores the impacts of militarism on society and offers a picture of women’s demilitarization attempts in Turkey. It applies Cynthia Enloe’s feminist curiosity to understand the link between militarism, gender, and conscientious objection. Recent works have applied Enloe’s feminist curiosity and brought about a feminist approach to critical military studies. Such works, illuminating as they are, have paid little attention to the case of Turkey, the only member of the Council of Europe that does not recognize the right to conscientious objection. Most importantly, current debates on resistance to militarism and the right to conscientious objection are centred on the case of Israel, where women are conscripted. This constitutes a significant lacuna in the literature which this article tries to fill by examining Turkey, where women are not conscripted yet they declare their conscientious objection. The article illustrates that conscription constitutes only one dimension of militarism and that militarism also affects women’s lives even though they are not subjected to compulsory military service. In so doing, it broadens the discussion on the right to conscientious objection by studying those who are previously assumed to be ‘irrelevant’.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23337486.2020.1815384","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45549422","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}
{"title":"Encountering the military-environmental complex: ten years since the creation of the Chagos marine protected area","authors":"P. Harris","doi":"10.1080/23337486.2020.1809252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2020.1809252","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This Encounter describes some of the events that led up to the creation of the Chagos Marine Protected Area (MPA) on 1 April 2010. It reflects on the role of social scientists in opposing militarism and the military-environmental complex.","PeriodicalId":37527,"journal":{"name":"Critical Military Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23337486.2020.1809252","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42158407","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}