War, Identity and the Liberal State: Everyday Experiences of the Geopolitical in the Armed Forces

229 Pages·2013·4.06 MB·English

by  Victoria M Basham

‘Victoria Basham opens windows onto the deeply masculinized world of
today’s British military. With refreshing candor, she reveals how the daily
presumptions and mundane interactions of male and female military personnel
shape fundamental notions of civilian authority, national defense and external
threats. This is a book that will awaken a lively interest in gendered politics
even for those who don’t think they need to think about gender.’
Cynthia Enloe, author of Nimo’s War, Emma’s War:
Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War
‘Victoria Basham’s incisive investigations into the politics of the everyday
uncover indispensable workings of geopolitics and reveal complex circulations
of power and resistance through gender, sexuality, and race. This book is
essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of what
underwrites and what is at stake in the “liberal” wars of our time.’
J. Marshall Beier, Department of Political Science,
McMaster University, Canada
‘This fascinating and rich, fi eld-based foray into the everyday life of the British
military “at home” undermines comfortable certainties about the nature of
soldiering or of being a civilian. Basham demonstrates the political value of
identifying the contradictions within the people deployed in the war system and
the complexities of how its violence intersects with gender, race, and sexuality.’
Catherine Lutz, Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Family Professor of Anthropology
and International Studies, Watson Institute for International Studies,
Brown University, USA
‘Basham’s focused analysis of the vitality of everyday politics in the
international not only provides a critical intervention into IR, but destabilizes
the assumed identity of the liberal state’s armed forces, bravely engaging the
co-constitutive role of gender, race and sexuality.’
Benjamin J. Muller, King’s University College, Canada
‘This timely and provocative analysis explores the contingency of the liberal
democratic state’s pursuit of war on the particular confi gurations of gender,
sexuality and race expressed through the practices, policies and bodies of
military forces.’
Rachel Woodward, Newcastle University, UK
‘Victoria Basham’s War, Identity and the Liberal State offers a sophisticated
and courageous exploration of the social life of organized violence. Moving
deftly between the geopolitical and the intimate everyday of British military
life, Basham provides precious insight into the human logistics of warfare.’
Deborah Cowen, Associate Professor, University of Toronto, Canada
‘Victoria Basham makes an important contribution to the critical understanding
of the military in the context of the contemporary, biopolitical state. Drawing
on extensive fi eld work, she tells a compelling tale of the gendered, raced, and
heteronormative nature of the contemporary military, even in our ever-more
diverse Western societies. The text is theoretically sophisticated, empirically
rich, and clearly and accessibly written, and will be a real benefi t to both
students and other researchers.’
David Mutimer, York University, Canada
War, Identity and the Liberal State
War, Identity and the Liberal State critically examines the signifi cance of gender,
race and sexuality to wars waged by liberal states and the soldiers who wage
them. Drawing on original fi eldwork research with British soldiers, it offers
insights into how their lived experiences are shaped by, and shape, a politics of
gender, race and sexuality that not only underpin power relations in the military,
but a wider geopolitics of war. It explores how shared and collectively mediated
knowledge on gender, race and sexuality facilitates certain claims about the nature
of governing in liberal states and about why and how such states wage war
against ‘illiberal’ ones in pursuit of global peace and security. In linking the poli-
tics of daily life to the international, this book insists that it is vital to explore how
geopolitical events and practices are co-constituted, reinforced and contested
in everyday experiences, practices and spaces. The book also urges scholars inter-
ested in the linguistic construction of geopolitics to consider the ways in which
everyday objects, spaces and bodies also reinforce particular ideas about war,
identity and statehood and some of their violent consequences.
This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international studies,
security, gender and feminist studies and critical and social theory.
Victoria M. Basham is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Exeter,
UK. Her research focuses on issues of gender, race, class and sexuality in relation
to militaries, militarism and militarization.
Interventions
Edited by
Jenny Edkins, Aberystwyth University and Nick Vaughan-Williams,
University of Warwick
‘As Michel Foucault has famously stated, “knowledge is not made for under-
standing; it is made for cutting.” In this spirit the Edkins–Vaughan-Williams
Interventions series solicits cutting edge, critical works that challenge main-
stream understandings in international relations. It is the best place to con-
tribute post disciplinary works that think rather than merely recognize and
affi rm the world recycled in IR’s traditional geopolitical imaginary’
Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawai’i at Mãnoa, USA
T he series aims to advance understanding of the key areas in which scholars
working within broad critical post-structural and post-colonial traditions have
chosen to make their interventions, and to present innovative analyses of impor-
tant topics.
T itles in the series engage with critical thinkers in philosophy, sociology, poli-
tics and other disciplines and provide situated historical, empirical and textual
studies in international politics.
Critical Theorists and Governing Sustainable
International Relations Development
Edited by Jenny Edkins and Partnership, protest and power at
Nick Vaughan-Williams the world summit
Carl Death
Ethics as Foreign Policy
Britain, the EU and the Other Insuring Security
Dan Bulley Biopolitics, security and risk
Luis Lobo-Guerrero
Universality, Ethics and
International Relations Foucault and International
A grammatical reading Relations
Véronique Pin-Fat New critical engagements
Edited by Nicholas J. Kiersey
The Time of the City and Doug Stokes
Politics, philosophy, and genre
Michael J. Shapiro
International Relations and Indian Foreign Policy
Non-Western Thought The politics of postcolonial identity
Imperialism, colonialism and Priya Chacko
investigations of global modernity
Edited by Robbie Shilliam Politics of the Event
Time, movement, becoming
Autobiographical Tom Lundborg
International Relations
I, IR Theorising Post-Confl ict
Edited by Naeem Inayatullah Reconciliation
Agonism, restitution and repair
War and Rape Edited by Alexander Keller Hirsch
Law, memory and justice
Nicola Henry Europe’s Encounter with Islam
The secular and the postsecular
Madness in International Relations Luca Mavelli
Psychology, security and the global
governance of mental health Re-Thinking International Relations
Alison Howell Theory via Deconstruction
Badredine Arfi
Spatiality, Sovereignty and
Carl Schmitt The New Violent Cartography
Geographies of the nomos Geo-analysis after the aesthetic turn
Edited by Stephen Legg Edited by Sam Okoth Opondo and
Michael J. Shapiro
Politics of Urbanism
Seeing like a city Insuring War
Warren Magnusson Sovereignty, security and risk
Luis Lobo-Guerrero
Beyond Biopolitics
Theory, violence and horror in world International Relations,
politics Meaning and Mimesis
François Debrix and Necati Polat
Alexander D. Barder
The Postcolonial Subject
The Politics of Speed Claiming politics/governing others in
Capitalism, the state and war in an late modernity
accelerating world Vivienne Jabri
Simon Glezos
Foucault and the Politics of Hearing
Politics and the Art Lauri Siisiäinen
of Commemoration
Memorials to struggle in Volunteer Tourism in the Global South
Latin America and Spain Giving back in neoliberal times
Katherine Hite Wanda Vrasti
Cosmopolitan Government Feminist International Relations
in Europe ‘Exquisite Corpse’
Citizens and entrepreneurs in Marysia Zalewski
postnational politics
Owen Parker The Persistence of Nationalism
From imagined communities to urban
Studies in the Trans-Disciplinary encounters
Method Angharad Closs Stephens
After the aesthetic turn
Michael J. Shapiro Interpretive Approaches to Global
Climate Governance
Alternative Accountabilities in Reconstructing the greenhouse
Global Politics Edited by Chris Methmann, Delf Rothe
The scars of violence & Benjamin Stephan
Brent J. Steele
Postcolonial Encounters with
Celebrity Humanitarianism International Relations
The ideology of global charity The politics of transgression
Ilan Kapoor Alina Sajed.
Deconstructing International Post-Tsunami Reconstruction
Politics in Indonesia
Michael Dillon Negotiating normativity through
gender mainstreaming initiatives
The Politics of Exile in Aceh
Elizabeth Dauphinee Marjaana Jauhola
Democratic Futures Leo Strauss, the Straussians and
Revisioning democracy promotion The Iraq War
Milja Kurki Encountering the Abyss
Aggie Hirst
Postcolonial Theory
A critical introduction Production of Postcolonial India
Edited by Sanjay Seth and Pakistan
Meanings of partition
More than Just War Ted Svensson
Narratives of the just war and
military life War, Identity and the
Charles A. Jones Liberal State
Everyday experiences of
Deleuze & Fascism the geopolitical in the armed
Security: war: aesthetics forces
Edited by Brad Evans & Julian Reid Victoria M. Basham
War, Identity and the
Liberal State
Everyday experiences of the
geopolitical in the armed forces
Victoria M. Basham
First published 2013
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2013 Victoria M. Basham
The right of Victoria M. Basham to be identifi ed as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Basham, Victoria.
War, identity and the liberal state : everyday experiences of the geopolitical in the
Armed Forces / Victoria M. Basham. – 1st edition.
p cm. – (Interventions)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-415-58341-1 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-203-75832-8 (e-book)
1. Great Britain. Army–Military life. 2. Sociology, Military–Great Britain.
3. Soldiers–Great Britain–Attitudes. 4. Women soldiers–Great Britain–Social
conditions. 5. Sex role–Great Britain. 6. Masculinity–Great Britain. 7. Racial
relations–Great Britain. 8. Geopolitics. I. Title.
U767.B29 2013
306.2’70941–dc23 2012051297
ISBN: 978-0-415-58341-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-75832-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Cenveo Publisher Services
For Alex, Alan and Rose,
and all of my cherished friends (you know who you are)