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

Coping with Knowledge: Organizational Learning in the British Army?

This article – based on data that employs interviews conducted with British Army personnel – adopts a social theory of learning in order to examine how both formal and informal learning systems have affected organizational learning within the Army in relation to the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan. It argues that while the Army has adopted new, or reformed existing, formal learning systems, these have not generated a reconceptualization of how to conduct counterinsurgency warfare. It, furthermore, argues that while informal learning systems have enabled units to improve their pre-deployment preparations, these have created adaptation traps that have acted as barriers to higher-level learning.Leverhulme Trus

War is where the hearth is: gendered labor and the everyday reproduction of the geopolitical in the army reserves

The feminized imaginary of “home and hearth” has long been central to the notion of soldiering as masculinist protection. Soldiering and war are not only materialized by gendered imaginaries of home and hearth though, but through everyday labors enacted within the home. Focusing on in-depth qualitative research with women partners and spouses of British Army reservists, we examine how women’s everyday domestic and emotional labor enables reservists to serve, constituting “hearth and home” as a site through which war is made possible. As reservists – who are still overwhelmingly heterosexual men – become increasingly called upon by the state, one must consider how the changing nature of the Army’s procurement of soldiers is also changing demands on women’s labor. Feminist IPE scholars have shown broader trends in the outsourcing of labor to women and its privatization. Our research similarly underscores the significance of everyday gendered labor to the geopolitical. Moreover, we highlight the fragility of military power, given that women can withdraw their labor at any time. The article concludes that paying attention to women’s everyday labor in the home facilitates greater understanding of one of the key sites through which war is both materialized and challenged

Bringing the homefront to the forefront: UK perspectives on critical research with military spouses

On the 9th of July 2021, the Rethinking Military Spouses: Critical Research Group hosted a webinar titled ‘Bringing the Homefront to the Forefront: UK Perspectives on Critical Research with Military Spouses’. This report provides some information about the event and includes an overview of the main points of discussion

The Israel defence forces' strategic and tactical adaptation to "intercommunal warfare" and its effect on troop morale

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[Review] Shlomo Gazit (2003) Trapped fools: thirty years of Israeli policy in the territories

Shlomo Gazit, Trapped Fools: Thirty Years of Israeli Policy in the Territories (London: Frank Cass, 2003, 368 pp., hbk.)

Variation on a theme: Israel's operation cast lead and the Gaza strip missile conundrum

Israel's assault on Gaza in early 2009, Operation Cast Lead, achieved significant tactical successes and managed to redeem the Israel Defence Forces’ poor performance during the 2006 Lebanon War. Sergio Catignani examines Israel's military and public information campaign and why Cast Lead failed to accomplish the government's two main goals of stopping rocket attacks on Israel and the influx of weapons for resupplying Hamas

Israeli counter-insurgency strategy and the quest for security in the Israeli-Lebanese conflict arena

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Israeli counterinsurgency: the never-ending 'whack-a-mole'

This new handbook provides a wide-ranging overview of the current state of academic analysis and debate on insurgency and counterinsurgency, as well as an-up-to date survey of contemporary insurgent movements and counter-insurgencies. In recent years, and more specifically since the insurgency in Iraq from 2003, academic interest in insurgency and counterinsurgency has substantially increased. These topics have become dominant themes on the security agenda, replacing peacekeeping, humanitarian operations and terrorism as key concepts. The aim of this volume is to showcase the rich thinking that is available in the area of insurgency and counterinsurgency studies and act as a further guide for study and research. In order to contain this wide-ranging topic within an accessible and informative framework, the Editors have divided the text into three key parts: Part I: Theoretical and Analytical Issues Part II: Insurgent Movements Part III: Counterinsurgency Cases The Routledge Handbook of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency will be of great interest to all students of insurgency and small wars, terrorism/counter-terrorism, strategic studies, security studies and IR in general, as well as professional military colleges and policymakers

The security imperative in counterterror operations: the Israeli fight against suicidal terror

Israel has had a long tradition of fighting international and Palestinian terror. This article looks at how Israel counterterrorism strategy and tactics have developed since the establishment of the State in 1948. By initially providing a working definition of terrorism, the article then goes to show how Israel has sought to defend itself from different Palestinian terror tactics. This article shows how Israeli security forces have struggled safeguarding, and sometimes disregarded Palestinian human rights. This article concludes by arguing that given the responsibility of democratic governments of defending their citizens from imminent terror attacks, such governments often find themselves paradoxically violating human rights. Despite attempts to reduce such human rights abuses, governments will never do so at the expense of their own security