What is Critical Military Studies?

Basham, Victoria M.; Belkin, Aaron; Gifkins, Jess

doi:10.1080/23337486.2015.1006879

Cited by 62 publications

(34 citation statements)

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“…Where the shared priorities of scholars interested in material culture, geopolitics and militarism arguably best come together is in Critical Military Studies (CMS) (Basham, Belkin, and Gifkins 2015; . Though the remit of the multi-disciplinary effort of CMS is still being explored, it reflects many of the same aspirations of critical geopolitics.…”

Section: Materials Cultures Geopolitics and Militarismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ephemera(l) Geopolitics: The Material Cultures of British Military Recruitment

Rech

2019

Geopolitics

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This paper explores contemporary cultures of British military recruitment and considers the domestication of geopolitics as matters of the ephemeral (fleeting, sensory encounters), and of ephemera (everyday objects). It employs an auto/ethnographic approach toward spaces critical to recruitmentthe airshow, the home and the body. Three central contributions are developed: first, building on a recent turn to the material in political geography, the paper argues that taking seriously materiality, objects, and 'stuff' enhances our understanding of the connections between geopolitical, militarised and everyday; second, deploying a notion of the geopolitical social, it explores the geopolitical as it is situated in everyday lives and spaces; third, it investigates the tendency for militarised objects to find their way onto and around bodies and into domestic spaces. Set at the interface of literatures in critical geopolitics and critical military studies, the paper concludes that material encounters and everyday objects are matters central to the business of geopolitics and militarism.

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Section: Materials Cultures Geopolitics and Militarismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ephemera(l) Geopolitics: The Material Cultures of British Military Recruitment

Rech

2019

Geopolitics

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“…The former is concerned primarily with how processes of power across scale shape human-environment interactions, and vice versa. Critical military studies, on the other hand, focuses on military power and the processes through which it operates without taking it for granted (Basham, Belkin, and Gifkins 2015;Rech et al 2015). This is what Enloe (2015, 7) calls a Òsceptical curiosity,Ó a curiosity that resonates well with political ecology.…”

Section: Militarizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linking green militarization and critical military studies

Massé

Lunstrum

Holterman

2017

Critical Military Studies

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The precipitous increase in commercial poaching across parts of Africa has been met by progressively more militarized responses. Amounting to green militarization, we now see national armies, increasingly paramilitarized rangers, military tactics, and even sophisticated military technology used to address the problem. Scholarly investigations on the topic have largely been approached from a political ecology perspective and hence have not made connections with the equally relevant field of critical military studies (CMS). We see this as a missed opportunity. This paper is thus an early attempt to begin forging these connections. At the most general level, we introduce green militarization Ð as a practice and realm of scholarly debate Ð to CMS. By bringing in environmental conservation and non-human nature, this offers a broader view into the vast areas of nominally civilian life that are increasingly militarized, a defining interest of CMS. Second, we draw from core CMS insights Ð especially regarding the link between development and security Ð to grasp changing practices and trends in green militarization. In particular, we illustrate how the recent shift toward softer militarized approaches amounts to poaching-related soft-counterinsurgency, which we capture in the concept of the conservation-security-development nexus. Here, communities become the object of development interventions to Òwin hearts and mindsÓ and prevent their involvement in poaching, thereby neutralizing the security threats poaching might pose. We close by suggesting future areas of intersection between CMS and the political-ecological work on green militarization in hopes of inciting a deeper engagement.

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“…This article, however, is also alert to a more critical perspective of FR2020 which sees it as a further instance of the militarization of the UK through attempts to normalize the military in a key sector of everyday life, employment (Walton 2014). The article develops a critical military studies (CMS) approach in problematizing rather than taking military power for granted (Basham and Gifkins 2015;Eastwood 2018), focussing on the micro-social and political contestation of military actors in the civilian workplace, and asking how far and in what kinds of ways reservists can be seen as vectors of militarization. Our analytical focus is on the potentially productive tensions between reservists' simultaneous workplace exclusion as exceptional military actors, and inclusion as civilians.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Militarization, stigma, and resistance: negotiating military reservist identity in the civilian workplace

Higate

Dawes

Edmunds

et al. 2019

Critical Military Studies

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Set against the backdrop of the British Government's Future Reserves 2020 (FR2020) programme, this article addresses military reservists' experiences of how they are perceived by civilian colleagues in the workplace. Drawing on qualitative interviews with reservists, it analyses their understandings of civilian co-workers' qualified and sometimes reluctant acceptance in light of FR2020's implicit aim to use reservists to help realign civil-military relationships. While it appears that civilian work colleagues' social distancing of reservists helps consolidate the wider public's perceived lack of understanding of the British armed forces, a more critical view sees reservists' largely unchallenged presence in the workplace as an exemplary, yet subtle instance of militarization. This is because reservists' simultaneous (physical) inclusion and (social) distancing or stigmatization constitutes, and is constitutive of, their need to pass as civilian. In conclusion, we argue that a key implication of their passing as civilian is to neutralize debate of the legitimacyor otherwiseof the armed forces as an institution tasked with violence on behalf of the state.

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What is Critical Military Studies?

Cited by 62 publications

References 0 publications

Ephemera(l) Geopolitics: The Material Cultures of British Military Recruitment

Ephemera(l) Geopolitics: The Material Cultures of British Military Recruitment

Linking green militarization and critical military studies

Militarization, stigma, and resistance: negotiating military reservist identity in the civilian workplace

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