Liberal militarism as insecurity, desire and ambivalence: gender, race and the everyday geopolitics of war

The use and maintenance of military force as a means of achieving security makes the identity and continued existence of states as legitimate protectors of populations intelligible. In liberal democracies, where individual freedom is the condition of existence, citizens, have to be motivated to cede some of that freedom in exchange for security, however. Accordingly, liberal militarism becomes possible only when military action and preparedness become meaningful responses to threats posed to the social body, not just the state, meaning that it relies on co-constitutive practices of the geopolitical and the everyday. Through a feminist discursive analysis of British airstrikes in Syria, and attendant debates on Syrian refugees, I examine how liberal militarism is animated through these co-constitutive sites, with differential effects. Paying particular attention to gender and race, I argue that militarism is an outcome of social practices characterized as much by everyday desires and ambivalence as fear and bellicosity. Moreover, I aim to show how the diffuse and often uneven effects liberal militarism produces actually make many liberal subjects less secure. I suggest therefore that despite the claims of liberal states that military power provides security, for many, militarism is insecurity

Raising an army: the geopolitics of militarizing the lives of working-class boys in an age of austerity

This article examines the political and social impact of elevating military values in society in a context of austerity. Centering on discussions around two British government “military ethos” initiatives, I consider the idea that military service instills desirable qualities and values in military personnel, making them well suited to educating and socializing children, to the advantage of both children and society. Arguing that these schemes primarily target boys from disadvantaged backgrounds in an effort to turn them into “productive” members of society, I suggest that military ethos initiatives contribute to not only the “raising” of working-class boys but the raising of a class-based army. Moreover, rather than focusing solely on the implications of the military ethos in the British context, I argue that its underlying assumptions about military socialization as a social good have significant geopolitical effects. Through characterizing the military as a core institution of society and its values as moral and good for children, these initiatives obscure the military’s core violent functions. Thus, by both normalizing violence and militarism in everyday life and targeting boys from disadvantaged backgrounds, “military ethos” initiatives engender the subjectivities that provide the very political, social economic, and indeed practical resources that make war possible

Reproducing the military and heteropatriarchal normal: Army Reserve service as serious leisure

The notion that military violence engenders security and that military service is a selfless and necessary act are orthodoxies in political, military and scholarly debate. The UK Reserves’ recent expansion prompts reconsideration of this orthodoxy, particularly as it suggests that reservists serve selflessly. Drawing on fieldwork with British Army reservists and their spouses/partners, we examine how this orthodoxy allows reservists to engage in everyday embodied performances, and occasionally articulations, of the need to serve, to free themselves up from household responsibilities. This supposed necessity of military service necessitates heteropatriarchal divisions of labour, which facilitate participation in military service and the state’s ability to conduct war/war preparations. However, whilst reserve service is represented as sacrificial and necessary it is far more self-serving and is better understood as ‘serious leisure’ (Stebbins, 1982), an activity whose perceived importance engenders deep selffulfilment. By showing that the performances of sacrifice and necessity reservists rely on are selfish, not selfless, we show how militarism is facilitated by such everyday desires. We conclude by reflecting on how exposing reserve service as serious leisure could contribute to problematising the state’s ability to rely on everyday performances and articulations of militarism and heteropatriarchy to prepare for and wage war

BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations in a population-based study of male breast cancer

Background: The contribution of BRCA1 and BRCA2 to the incidence of male breast cancer (MBC) in the United Kingdom is not known, and the importance of these genes in the increased risk of female breast cancer associated with a family history of breast cancer in a male first-degree relative is unclear. Methods: We have carried out a population-based study of 94 MBC cases collected in the UK. We screened genomic DNA for mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 and used family history data from these cases to calculate the risk of breast cancer to female relatives of MBC cases. We also estimated the contribution of BRCA1 and BRCA2 to this risk. Results: Nineteen cases (20%) reported a first-degree relative with breast cancer, of whom seven also had an affected second-degree relative. The breast cancer risk in female first-degree relatives was 2.4 times (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.4–4.0) the risk in the general population. No BRCA1 mutation carriers were identified and five cases were found to carry a mutation in BRCA2. Allowing for a mutation detection sensitivity frequency of 70%, the carrier frequency for BRCA2 mutations was 8% (95% CI = 3–19). All the mutation carriers had a family history of breast, ovarian, prostate or pancreatic cancer. However, BRCA2 accounted for only 15% of the excess familial risk of breast cancer in female first-degree relatives. Conclusion: These data suggest that other genes that confer an increased risk for both female and male breast cancer have yet to be found

(En)gendering the political: Citizenship from marginal spaces

This introduction sets out the central concerns of this special issue, the relationship between marginality and the political. In doing so it makes the argument that the process of marginalisation, the sites and experiences of ‘marginality’ provide a different lens through which to understand citizenship. Viewing the political as the struggle over belonging it considers how recent studies of citizenship have understood political agency. It argues that marginality can help us understand multiple scales, struggles and solidarities both within and beyond citizenship. Whilst there is a radical potential in much of the existing literature in citizenship studies it is also important to consider political subjectivities and acts which are not subsumed by right claims. Exploring marginality in this way means understanding how subjects are disenfranchised by regimes of citizenship and at the same how time this also (en)genders new political possibilities which are not always orientated towards 'inclusion'. The introduction then sets out how each article contributes to this project

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Everyday modalities of militarization: beyond unidirectional, state-centric, and simplistic accounts of state violence

Critiques of militarization have deftly highlighted its limitations as a concept, not least because it too easily implies something done to otherwise benign and peaceful societies by militaries. The guest editors of this special issue however are inviting scholars to rethink militarization through the notion of everyday modalities. This more sociological approach, I argue, enables us to consider how militarization simultaneously produces and is produced through society. This, I argue, enables us to more fully examine the extent and character of the social and daily labour that makes state violence possible, to decentre the notion that state violence is almost always legitimate and that it is the only form of legitimate violence, and explore the multiple ways that communities contest the reproduction of militarized violence in their lives. Treating militarization in terms of everyday modalities therefore can facilitate more nuanced thinking about the social reproduction of violence