Making Sense of Masculinity and War

Abstract

This article examines modes of theorizing about war in two contemporary literatures: on war and gender and on the changing nature of war. Both these literatures make a connection between masculinity and war. The article argues that, on examination, the link between masculinity and war does not depend on the substantive meanings of either masculinity or war, or on a causal or constitutive relation between the two; rather, masculinity is linked to war because the formal, relational properties of masculinity provide a framework through which war can be rendered both intelligible and acceptable as a social practice and institution.

Punishing kids: the rise of the ‘boot camp’

“…Enloe 2007 ;Hutchings 2008;Sjoberg and Via 2010;Haywood and Mac an Ghaill 2013, 68 -73). We share many of these concerns; it is our view that military discourses work to valorise particular forms of masculinity that in turn work to legitimise essentialist assumptions about men's relationship to violence.…”

Foreign Security Policy, Gender, and US Military Identity

“…: 44). This is also true for Der Derian (2001), who, while examining what he calls the military-industrialmedia-entertainment network, shows how the links of this network are becoming increasingly intense and 'also demonstrates how military thinking makes sense of the new forms of warfare via analogies with business and the market' (Hutchings 2008a).…”

Avatars of Eurocentrism in the critique of the liberal peace

“…But is this really something to be celebrated as more 'culturally appropriate', or does it rather represent a more efficient instrument of neo-colonial governance? Hutchings (2008a) has argued that whilst 'masculinity' and 'war' are both unstable categories, they are nonetheless mutually constitutive because they render each other intelligible as categories of social practice. A similar relationship can be understood to exist between the intellectual frameworks of Eurocentrism and the liberal peace.…”