13 thoughts on “4 | Militarism, Militarization + Martial Politics”
Alyssa Victorino
This week’s overarching concept of security resonated most with me. I keep coming back to the quote “We live with war” (Howell, 2018, pg. 119). Throughout the Howell article, I thought of Kamala Harris’ famous coconut meme—as in, the conflict-ridden world that we keep hearing about and referring to did not just simply fall out of a coconut tree. It, in fact, exists within the context of all in which we live and what came before us. Namely, of decades of colonial violence, as facilitated largely by militaristic forces. I appreciated the distinctions made between ‘martial politics’ and ‘militarization’ to point out how militaristic institutions do not just become war-like, but rather were built out of war. The concept of militarization assumes a peaceful norm before it, but for non-white and queer bodies, was there ever any peace to return to?
We read from Rozina Ali how 9/11 completely transformed the lives of Muslim and immigrant families through racialized laws and practices, shattering entire communities and senses of self, all in the name of ‘national security.’ I tied this to Parashar (2018) and their comments on nation-building. They highlighted how conflict can deepen the imagined boundaries between states, and how this takes place through strengthening national identity by identifying and villainizing an ‘other.’ And after Suheir Hummad, it is women who have had to swallow their grief as mostly Muslim men and boys are targeted through racism and xenophobia. Through excessive militarism, the state, in theory, should feel safer. But if that were true, why are so many people still so afraid? Through militarization, as a continuation of colonial violence against marginalised people, the notion of security has been redefined as justification for further violence.
Hedström (2018) also covered the idea of nation-building and the centrality of women’s bodies in these projects. Women facilitate wars and revolutions through different forms of gendered labour and yet remain undervalued and demeaned. The article points to how sexual violence in the context of conflict becomes an extension of conquest—a means to draw heavier lines between allies and the opposition. Consequently, women are treated as pawns in the nation-building game. Women are arranged in marriages for the purpose of reproducing the next generation of soldiers, denied access to reproductive rights, and their experiences of violence within resistance efforts go undetected—all in the name of security.
When my parents experienced martial law in the Philippines when they were in college, they witnessed their peers disappear or dragged and beaten in the streets they took to go to school. When they marched on EDSA during the People Power Revolution, they valiantly rejected a cruel dictatorship and military rule. They saw first-hand how military and police forces are something to fear. They understood how the guns that killed friends of friends were supplied by the US, and how the bodies behind the uniforms were trained by the very people who committed genocide against our own. They existed to preserve a social order embedded in our colonial history.
Questions:
1. To whom is security afforded? Whose sense of security must be compromised to uplift another’s?
2. How are perceptions of safety used to legitimise militarization or hide martial politics? How are they challenged?
I know this is coming out of left field, but hear me out. Reindeer herding.
I am writing this from Karasjok, Norway, home to about 2,500 people and the Sami Parliament of Norway’s home-base, Sámediggi. The Sami are the Indigenous people of Sápmi, an area of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and western Russia. I have had the privilege of working with some of the Sami human rights leaders for about a year under my MA supervisor, on co-developing research priorities and capacity. I am here for a conference about Indigenous governance and salmon research. It is estimated that across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, there are 100,000 Sami people, just over half of whom live in Norway. For the Sami, identity is rooted in language; one cannot claim Sami heritage unless they, their parents or their grandparents speak one of ten Sami languages. Further, Sami are often described based on their ancestral sustenance practice: Sea Sami, Forest Sami, Reindeer Sami, etc. (this week, a colleague of mine mentioned that he was adding another category: Conference Sami).
Reindeer Sami make up the majority of Sami siidas (communities connected by sustenance, politics and families) and represent the strongest continuance of practice; the rights of Reindeer Sami to their livelihood are better protected than those whose livelihoods come from the sea or the forest (though it’s a low bar). Today, Reindeer Sami are reindeer herders, and it is such a fundamental part of Sami society that contentions on reindeer herding shape the contours of politics and daily life. Reindeer herding brokers marriages, starts social conflict, and is so culturally-embedded that famously, the number-one faux pas made by those coming to Sápmi from elsewhere is asking someone how big their herd is. As you drive the roads, you often pass lavvu, temporary lodging for reindeer herders following their herds.
So, imagine my surprise, finding out today – that reindeer herding was a response to the colonization (they often say “Norwegianization”) and armed prohibition of the Sami practice of wild reindeer hunting, which pre-dates contact with the colonial state but was subsequently outlawed. In Canada, R. v. Van der Peet (1996) controversially established that a right to an Indigenous practice could only be protected if it were demonstrably integral to any given Indigenous community’s life pre-contact with colonization – as though once a European settler had entered the scene, no one else’s lifeways and rights were worthy of protection. However, here, in all the conversations I have gotten to have and stories I have gotten to listen to, no one has brought up a desire to return to wild reindeer hunting, only to have their rights to reindeer herding protected by the state.
Reading Howell, then, was particularly impactful. Norwegianization mirrors Canadian colonization a number of ways, and the “indivisibility of war and peace” (130) is so very apparent. Within the past century, police and military in Norway drove the single highway through Sápmi and burned everything the came across, sent children to residential schools and deliberately flooded villages with dams in the hopes of washing away Sami communities. And yet, today, Sami Parliaments and Sami people fight tooth and nail for the practice of reindeer herding – a practice that only became integral to their existence due to the militarized prohibition of wild reindeer hunting. The intertwining of these realities is striking to see and hear.
Further, we were able to participate in a tour of Sámediggi – which is like, the most beautiful parliament building I have ever seen. As we finished, the person giving us the tour explained that one of the photos on the wall is of Elsa Layla Renberg – the original chairwoman of what became the Sami Parliament – in 1917. The person giving the tour explained that in Sami politics, women have always been at the forefront. Women complete postsecondary education at a higher rate and make up most of the parliament. The past three Sami Parliament of Norway presidents have been women. Some in the room were impressed – and it is, impressive. But the reality is that this reflects the legacies of colonization on Sami men, who die by suicide at a rate three times the national average – and have for as long as data has been collected. As I read Hedström, I thought of how to marry the two realities – women are the body politic here. Yet, as so much of governance (estimated 80% by our tour guide) revolves around resource rights, the realm of men, the “women are keeping the armed revolution alive by virtue of their gendered labour” (64) all the same – even though the war and the labour look different than we might expect.
This was kind of a downer so let me also tell you that I just stepped out from the formal dinner to finish this blog post. At the dinner, Athabaskan and Aleut women of Alaska and the Yukon, and Indigenous women of Kamchatka (Russia) – who had never met – found commonality in a song passed down through generations. The consistency in the generational teachings was so detailed that the women danced together in what looked like perfect choreography. This morning, another faculty member from UBC and her graduate student took the time to explain Truth and Reconciliation Day and why we wear orange shirts. Tonight, the Sámediggi is lit up in bright orange. Harkening back to last week – resistance will always find a way.
Questions:
1. What shapes our view of “gendered labour”? What are the expectations we have of it, and what kinds of contexts do we imagine it being most prevelant in?
2. Following up on “where is war” – who is part of a war? What should we, as policy practitioners and researchers, due to expand our imaginings of what people look like when they are at war?
This week’s resources made me reflect on the various ways I’ve perceived and misunderstood war for my entire life. Before enrolling in this class, I always thought of war as something that was clearly defined. In last week’s class, I even caught myself saying that despite ongoing violence in disputed territories between India and Pakistan, the two countries were not in a “formal” war. My prior understandings of war were rooted in the false presumptions of a peaceful liberal order that Howell criticized, and my ignorant perceptions rested on formal statements by high-level politicians and declarations by powerful Western governments in the Global North. While I understood the long-lasting and intergenerational impacts of war, I had somehow thought of them as having a clear “before” and “after.”
Despite growing up in Thailand and living through two military coups, I think had normalized the link the political instability and the presence of police and military forces. I had also seen it as a symptom of the power struggle between high-profile warring political parties and candidates, instead of considering how marginalized groups were being affected and silenced through the process. Additionally, my dad was a politician in the liberal party during these years and would be subject to several safety precautions, sometimes having to flee to safehouses or having a security detail. My childhood home was broken into, documents were stolen, and there’s a long list of other stories relating to my family’s safety that I think I was too young enough to comprehend at the time. As such, despite having direct experience with militarization and martial politics, I personalized the entire experience through the experience of a higher-ranking politician and failed to think about its broader implications. Howell’s article helped shift things into perspective for me: It very clearly illustrated how “before and after” thinking fails to consider the “war-like relations of force perpetrated against populations deemed to be a threat to civil order or the health of the population, especially along the lines of race, Indigeneity, disability, gender, sexuality, and class” (Howell, 118).
Upon listening to the 60 words Radio Lab episode, I also immediately realized how formal declarations of war and the authorization for the use of violence were justified by ill-defined legal jargon framed in the name of national security. The episode highlighted how definitions of war rest in the hands of a few singular people in governments to “protect” their nation and failed to address the voices that were being silenced in the process. The episode also left me wondering, are declarations of war from governments in countries perceived as less powerful or in the Global South made in similar ways?
The Parashar reading addressed this in the Indian context. They wrote about the similar deployment of laws designed to protect the fragile state, and how the dominance of the nation-state is reinstated, “by ensuring all local and global issues are considered in relation to the sovereignty and the integrity of the nation-state” (Parashar, 126). In combination with the other readings, it is made abundantly clear that national security becomes synonymous with military strength, prioritizing male and other privileged groups and rendering gendered, sexed, Indigenous, racialized, and other marginalized people invisible.
Questions:
How can we distinguish and celebrate cultural traditions and expectations for women living in conflict zones from their complicity in gendered practices? Is it possible for both to exist if national security rests on the gendered practices of women?
A quick note before I start on my actual reflection, or maybe it is part of how I engaged with this week’s readings, is that the way the podcast was edited particularly at the beginning and in the use of the archival clips sounded very satisfying. It was almost like a poem, with people finishing each other’s sentences. All while building up the tension till the 60 words that are the basis of the podcast were read.
The American motto “Never forget” in the years that have followed 9/11 are the truest words I have ever heard in my life. The US has not let the world forget what happened that day, and even 13 years after the fact every single year there are documentaries replayed over and over again of that day and social media is filled with memoriam posts. I have to say, I barely remember what happened on Sept. 11th 2001; I was about to turn 4 years old, had just begun kindergarten, but I remember asking my grandma if she had seen on TV the two planes that crashed into the Twin Towers. And she said “yes, but don’t talk about it”. To me, it did not make any sense why nobody was talking about what had happened, but it really did not have a lot of effect in my daily life. This was early 2000’s Mexico, I was so young and I don’t think my parents saw the need to explain to a toddler what terrorism or who Osama Bin-Laden was. And even in the immediate years that followed, when the US invaded Iraq, I did not learn of the true impact 9/11 had in world politics until I started studying it in middle school. The podcast really highlighted the way State leaders, in this case US presidents, have used language as a way of justifying war and violence. By having such a broad definition of what constitutes as “necessary and appropriate force”, Congress basically gave former President Bush an ample spectrum of things he could do on his war on terror. What was also highlight briefly but something that I go back to, is the use of “organizations or persons” as entities that can wage war against the US. Organizations eventually went to mean Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but the emphasis on “persons” definitely drew my attention. In reflecting more on the legacy on 9/11, I am also reflecting on the rise of islamophobia that arguably could be backtracked to 9/11 and the US response. The poem “First Writing Since” by Suheir Hammad I think examines perfectly the way Muslim and Arab people have been made the perpetrators of many of the attacks that have taken place in the Western world ever since. The phrase “innocent until proven guilty” was thrown away and instead, as Rozina Ali points out in her Twitter thread, it was “guilty until proven there is no link to terrorism”.
Heldström’s article on the role of women and the process of militarization, points out the ways in which women have contributed to war and the militarization process through gendered expectations in the household. However, Heldström also points out how the same stereotypical gender roles, such as women’s roles as grandmothers and mothers, have rejected the militarization process. Her example of the Argentinian women demanding an answer on what happened to their children under the military junta, reminds of what has happened in Mexico with the missing and murdered women. Arguably, the whole movement of #NiUnaMenos back in 2008, when Marisela Escobedo spent almost two years protesting that the State should apprehend her daughter’s killer, after a jury declared he was not guilty even with sufficient evidence to prove that he was the killer. Marisela was murdered in front of the Government Palace in Chihuahua. Impunity is almost its own war in Mexico, with government officials rarely following the law and most crimes, particularly those that involve women, go “unsolved” or not even investigated. I then reflect on my own experiences growing up in Mexico. I grew up in a middle-high income environment, I went to school with people who are daughters or sons of some of the richest and most influential men in Mexico, and one would think we would be so far removed from the violence in Mexico and for the most part we were. But I still remember growing up during Felipe Calderon’s presidency, who militarized the entire country to fight a “war” on drugs. Since kidnappings and extortions were an everyday occurrence, one of the ways they told us to keep us safe was to never save our family members in our phone contacts with “mom” or “dad” or anything that could indicate a family connection. We saved them under their names… to this day, I still have my parents contacts under their names.
Question:
How are civilians embedded in a militarization process without necessarily realizing they are part of this state?
How has the education of history, wars, and security been used as a tool in the militarization of any given country?
I do not know much about war. I do not know what historically defines it or what differentiates it from what it used to be and what it is currently understood as. However, the 60 Words podcast confirmed what I did know about war: that in many cases, it could have been avoided (loosely speaking) through conversation, empathy, and understanding those who are not like us—rather than leading with fear of retaliation or anger to prevent future attacks. Declaring war to avoid a future war? That doesn’t seem right. Of all the wars initiated by nation-states that I have learned about through family or formal education, there appears to be a common thread of power struggles and misunderstandings driving these conflicts. Another consistent aspect is the devastating impact on civilians, particularly women and children, who often become the “victims” of war.
The podcast highlighted the ambiguity of modern warfare and reflected on the difficulty of ending a “war” that is so loosely defined. Unlike traditional wars with clear objectives and formal agreements to signal peace, today’s conflicts are often ongoing, with no definitive victories or resolutions. When terms like “war” are applied to broad, poorly defined threats, such as terrorism, it creates a perpetual state of conflict where the line between wartime and peacetime is blurred. In many cases, the U.S. acts as the primary decider of war, force, and militarism. We saw it in World War II with Hiroshima, in the 1950s with Vietnam over the fear of communism, and post-9/11, when the entire MENA region was villainized, mainly targeting Muslims. Muslim women, especially those wearing hijabs, were disproportionately affected as racialization and othering of Arabs and Middle Easterners became widespread.
In thinking about war, militarization, and women, the roles women take are simplified either as victims or entirely sidelined, negating their existence as agents. However, I did not realize the extent to which women were involved in sustaining wars, as highlighted by Jenny Hedström’s idea of militarized social reproduction, emphasizing that women’s everyday labour keeps militarization going. And it makes sense, but the physical and emotional roles women have in supporting militarization. Even in my everyday thinking of war, I assign primary gender roles to men – contributing to the stereotype continuously enforced. What I found to be interesting is how women’s symbolic roles play a large part in justifying war, having their bodies be representative of their nation’s vulnerability, with the threat of sexual violence legitimizing or validating armed resistance. There’s an irony of women being seen as needing protection but also being leveraged to fuel the militarization that threatens them.
Alison Howell’s concept of martial politics further complicates this narrative by demonstrating that war-like relations are heavily embedded in civilian institutions, including judicial, law enforcement, and educational institutions. This proves that militarization isn’t just an external force invading peaceful spaces but is woven into the fabric of our social structures. Women’s labour is closely linked to these institutional dynamics, either supporting or advocating against it.
My questions:
How do women’s roles in supporting or resisting war complicate the idea that militarization is solely a male-driven process? (i.e. Kamala sending ~$9 billion to support Israel’s occupation of Palestine). Does this involvement in war contribute to the victimization or villainization of women? Or does their involvement present a “vulnerable” and “positively emotional” side of the war that contributes to its support?
Alison’s Martial Politics provides a compelling analysis of how everyday situations at home are similar to war. One of the most intriguing aspects of the article is the author’s discussion on how intersectionality is inseparable from these war-like situations. Alison argues that policing has not merely become militarized but has always been inherently war-like, functioning as part of a broader system of martial politics aimed at controlling and marginalizing racialized, Indigenous, disabled, and queer communities to uphold liberal order.
I find this analysis particularly resonant with the situation in India, where caste, religion and gender systems play a powerful role in targeting scheduled communities and minority groups. These groups are often deliberately kept most vulnerable and marginalized, with the aim of maintaining social and liberal order in the country. The intersection of caste, gender, and religion in India mirrors the broader themes of martial politics, as they are used to reinforce existing hierarchies and sustain systemic oppression.
The 60 words in the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), enacted in response to the 9/11 attacks, serve as a striking example of how the U.S. took a firm stand on combating terrorism. By granting itself the authority to use force against countries like Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of dismantling terrorist networks, the U.S. overlooked the long-term effects of these hasty reactions. What is particularly surprising is the strong stance taken by Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who foresaw the potential for prolonged war and was the only member of Congress to vote against the AUMF. These 60 words, which authorized the use of “all necessary force” against anyone connected to the 9/11 attacks, have led to one of America’s longest and most militarized conflicts, resulting in significant civilian casualties. This situation can be likened to a household dynamic where men, assuming a self-authorized position of power, justify domestic violence against women.
Jenny’s discussion on Militarised Social Reproduction and how militarization affects everyday life, especially within domestic spaces and labor dynamics, is particularly thought-provoking. The research on military wives highlights how militarization infiltrates homes through emotional and relational connections, even when far from the battlefield. Additionally, Cynthia Enloe’s theory, which emphasizes that militarization is deeply rooted in gender assumptions and perpetuated by both state and private actors, reveals another hard truth. This analysis reminds me of my close friend, a military wife, who sacrificed her passionate career to support her soldier husband. He was stationed at the border, and she had to endure her pregnancy journey without his support, facing the daily emotional toll of not knowing about his well-being on the battlefield. The sacrifices military wives make are invaluable and often go unnoticed, as research on military life rarely focuses on the gendered aspects of these experiences.
Swati’s discussion of excessive militarism in India, which emerged in the post-Cold War era as a result of globalization, is indeed surprising to me. The author highlights how this militarism has influenced governance and everyday life. It is maintained by contrasting national security with external “others” and by blending military practices with civil governance. This militarism operates through draconian laws that suspend civil rights, exert militaristic influence on non-military spheres such as politics and education, and addresses local and global conflicts through militarized solutions, normalizing a state of permanent wartime discipline.
I can relate this to a chapter in my social studies curriculum where I was taught about militaristic narratives and their impact on perceptions of military and defense. In India, the emphasis on the military’s role is pervasive; it is often portrayed as essential for guarding against immediate rivals. As a result, in some states, it is a common belief that every household should encourage at least one child to pursue a career in the military.
Questions that I have:
1. Why is the military viewed as the ultimate source of power in a nation? Who grants them this authority, and what contributes to their sense of power? Is it primarily due to the destructive nature of their access and possession to weapons, or is it the individuals who yield this authority to assert their dominance?
2. If it takes only 60 words for the USA to justify launching a war against so-called terrorist groups, does this imply that words have more power than weapons? If language and words hold such influence, why not research papers are unable to influence peace and security?
This week’s readings brought up many important issues and contributing factors or systems within the realm of martial politics and militarization, but I was particularly struck by Howell’s discussion of the University as a site of martial politics. “The university was never such a pure site. Many American universities were built with slave labor or its proceeds (Brown University Committee on Slavery and Justice n.d.), and from the outset have contributed vitally to colonization and White supremacy.”, This reading made me think about recent Protest on university campuses in support of Palestine.
In the past year, we have seen the covert violence and militarization which universities are founded upon become overt on a mass scale. Students have had police called on them, been attacked by the National Guard, had their degrees withheld due to their organizing; standing up and speaking out against a genocide means students are denied a right to education. This kind of violence against students has been happening for decades, but with the growth of social media, we can now recognize how to exist on a larger scale and has become more visible to greater populations. We are reminded that Universities are for profit institutions, funded by investments in military and war.
These institutions refuse to speak out against Israel, or to even recognize that there is a genocide occurring, let alone divest from this kind of military violence, because it is integral to their existence. In a recent interview discussing attacks in Lebanon, Noam Chomsky stated “The United States considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization but the term terrorism is used by the great powers simply to refer to forms of violence of which they disapprove”(Chomsky, 2024). In this weeks content I am reminded that the divisions between war, revolution, and terrorism are so often a matter of perspective. Great powers shape this perspective through a lens of white supremacy, racism, classism, sexism, and ablism.
Not only do the institutions fund and support this kind of martial politic, it is no coincidence that these are the same institutions which are responsible for education of the youth. I consider my own education with regards to the genocide of Indigenous people in Canada, as a white child growing up in Canada. So much of the history I was provided with was white washed, or erased entirely. The institutions which enact such violence are able to hide the violence as history continues. Only when mass attention is drawn to these atrocities does any change occur, and this change is slow and painstaking. Even today, in 2024, on Truth and Reconciliation Day, only 13 of 94 calls to action have been completed, and none of these were completed in the past year. According to the Yellowhead Institute, of the remaining calls to action, none are in progress (Yellowhead Institute, 2023). I am reminded of the power of community but simultaneously, the limits faced by those who push back against a status quo.
Questions:
1. Who gets to determine the line drawn between war and terrorism; who and how do we decide what kind of violence is acceptable or justifiable?
2. How are educational institutions weaponized by military forces and martial politics.
I felt that this week’s readings built very naturally on the readings and discussions we had last week about war in the everyday. Notably, the question of “where is war?” I found that Howell’s analysis of how war pervades the liberal order extended the arena of war beyond a conflict zone. The idea of militarism being ingrained in our society demonstrates how war is all around, and we can enable and support it in ways we may not even be aware of. I found this was illustrated well through Hedström’s framework for understanding militarized social reproduction, notably, the gendered labour of enabling, supporting, symbolizing, legitimizing, and rejecting, that can contribute to or challenge militarization. While this was a distinctly gendered analysis, I think it can be extended to illustrate how pervasive militarism is in everyday life and seemingly routine actions. War really is in the everyday. Hedström’s analysis illustrates how even by simply existing, women’s bodies are used to justify and enable militarism through “the use of femininity to legitimize armed conflict,” and the portrayal of women as “beautiful souls” who represent “home and hearth” (p.69). The use of people’s bodies to justify a state of militarization is dehumanizing, further illustrated by Suheir Hammad’s poem, wherein she underscores the deep connections between individual stories and the forces of militarization that seek to erase them.
In the same way that Howell’s work extends the arena of war, placing ‘militarization’ in the context of an already martial society, the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed in the wake of the September 11 attacks, expanded the scope of military engagement beyond traditional battlefields, legitimizing a state of perpetual conflict. This validates Howell’s concept of ‘martial politics’, which challenges the idea that in the process of militarization, “the exception (war) encroaches on the norm (peace)” (p. 118). Rather, policies like AUMF simply institutionalized this already intertwined relationship. This was supported by Parashar’s analysis of post-colonial anxiety and militarization. I was particularly interested in the idea of democratization of security, and how the citizenry is transformed to support militarism as a tool for security and consequent development. In the North American context, I’m reminded of the relationship between militarism and morality, with militarism used to represent heroism in extremely popular franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or even cop shows like Brooklyn 99. Writing this on Truth and Reconciliation Day, I’m reminded of how surprised some people are when they hear stories of violence from the RCMP. For instance, conversations with family members after a recent headline detailing eight isolated murders of Indigenous people by the police within days of one another: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-police-indigenous-deaths-accountability/. As Howell points out, this is not an instance of increased militarization from the Canadian police, but rather, the control and often removal of Indigenous peoples is cemented in the very foundation of a colonial policing system. In her words, they serve as “security forces for settler colonialism” (123).
My questions for the week:
In what ways do contemporary cultural representations of militarism, such as those found in the Marvel Cinematic Universe or police dramas shape public perceptions of security and morality? How might these narratives influence societal attitudes towards state violence, especially in the context of ongoing issues like Indigenous rights and systemic racism?
Reflecting on the example of the RCMP and the recent headlines surrounding violence against Indigenous people, what role does public perception play in legitimizing the militarization or martial politics of policing, particularly in relation to Indigenous communities in Canada, and how can truth and reconciliation function in a state so steeped in martial politics?
Howell does explain that there’s a history of ‘the militarization of police’ all the way back to chattel slavery, through the Jim Crow era, and to contemporary mass incarceration (Howell, 2018, p. 122), which would obviously include the history of the Black Panther Party (BPP). However, I would have loved for the author to bring up the history of the party even briefly in their article as I believe it is an important piece of history in dealing with the militarization of the American police. Whenever I think of policing the militarized police, I think of the BPP due to how members armed themselves to keep their communities safe from police brutality. I was surprised the Party was never mentioned in the article.
I had never heard of the term “gender washing” before (I am ashamed to admit that), so Jester & Walter’s article was an interesting read. I instantly noticed a point in the article that we have discussed before in class: “the importance of the everyday” (Jester & Walter, 2024, p. 4) when the authors explain what feminist Security Studies focus on. I very much appreciated the breakdown in different varieties of gender washing by the authors on page 7.
I appreciated the content analysis that the authors were engaged in to analyze and understand how arms manufacturers gender wash war. Social media posts by brands, corporations, and companies are indeed just ways of advertising themselves to the public. Reading their analysis of how masculinist companies take advantage of hashtags like IWD (International Women’s Day) to misleadingly push and promote their false idea of “empowerment”, “equality”, and “progress”, to women and girls, especially those in the Global South is disheartening.
Parashar’s article that describes how local elites in states in the ‘Third World’ have continued re-asserting colonial-style rule over their people via a strong military and militarization even after independence which contributes to postcolonial anxiety (Parashar, 2018, p. 127). I immediately drew a comparison with the contemporary RCMP from this article. The origins of the RCMP come from Canada’s colonial past and their use was to further the colonial interests of the British and French settlers. Even though Canada today is independent and not a direct subject to a European empire, the RCMP remains the same as it did when it was created as one of many tools to genocide Indigenous peoples and forcefully settle their land. When we understand Parashar’s explanation and definition of ‘postcolonial anxiety’ one can further make a comparison that within Canada, a Western nation, Indigenous and First Nations, along with other racialized individuals, suffer from persistent postcolonial anxiety as many colonial institutions from the past remain unchanged today. Individuals, mostly Westerners, who have not had a brutal and bloody history with Canadian institutions would not most likely not suffer from postcolonial anxiety even though both groups of Canadians live in the same country (and in the ‘First World’).
My question that was invoked by Jester & Walter’s article was: What exactly is an “ethical arms trade”? How can an arms trade be “ethical”? I would think that all arms trades are unethical by default as they would involve weapons that have the potential to destroy people’s lives.
As I read this week’s readings, I found myself considering how easy it is to fall into thinking in binaries.
This came up in the Hedstrom reading, in the discussion of gender norms. Under the discussion of supporting as a form of militarized social reproduction, Hedstrom asks, “if women were naturally inclined to engage in emotional labour and prefer it to soldering, [sic] why would this work need to be managed and demarcated as separate from soldiering? This narrative mask [sic] the not-insignificant amount of work required to both manage the boundaries of gendered and encourage women to engage in it for no, or next to no, profit” (Hedstrom, 2022, 67).
I would love to hear how others interpreted this question, but for me Hedstrom raises two salient issues. First is the question of why, if gender roles are supposedly innate predispositions (which of course they aren’t), does the social reproduction of them require so much effort? Second, if women were naturally inclined to engage in emotional labour and prefer it to soldiering, and women’s primary responsibility is within the home, why are women’s units organized at all?
This questioning of binaries also surfaced in the Howell reading, which questioned the war/peace binary that is implied within the concept of militarization as well as the linear before/after binary that upholds it. The question (raised originally by Enloe and quoted by Howell), “how do they militarize a can of soup?” (119) reads almost like a bad joke when you consider the answer is “it was already militarized.”
This train of thought led me down a few other paths, including: how would Canada come to be militarized?/In what ways is Canada already militarized? While I don’t have the word count to deconstruct the ways in which this country is already militarized, “what if” I found myself asking in the context of the Hedstrom reading is around the idea of nation-building through domestic reproduction and the ways in which war co-opts this reproduction. I remember commonly being told growing up that women began to get jobs outside of the home around the time of WWII, when the men went off to war, leaving women to take up the jobs they left behind and that the war created (like making weaponry). However, if women now largely work outside of the home and still produce much of the domestic labour, what more could be co-opted should Canada become increasingly militarized?
Another point I considered was in the context of Hedstrom, again, when women making uniforms was discussed. Does the uniform make the soldier? And if so, what does that imply for the one who makes the uniform?
Finally, what I think was a typo in the first quote I listed (soldering rather than soldiering) gave me pause. Soldering is the process of joining two metals together. In the context of the article, reproductive labour can also be understood as joinery – joining pieces of fabric together to make a uniform, for example, or joining one generation to the next by bearing children.
Last week I made a very confusingly phrased point about how my view of conflict feels like it’s changing visually in my head, and while I don’t particularly know if I have figured out how to clarify this yet, I think Elena’s question “Where is war?” (great question) is helping me start to untangle that. I’ve heard the terms “positive peace” and “negative peace” before, so I had some experience with the academic terms used to describe the ways that violence and conflict persist for some people long after an official conflict is declared over, whether that’s due to race, gender, experiences with colonialism, sexuality, etc. I’ve been thinking a lot this week, especially with the militarization readings we’re doing, about what I’m describing as “circles of war and conflict”, where there is conflict happening on and in the body, there is conflict happening in a household, community, state, international sphere. The body as a site of war keeps coming up for me, and especially the idea of security as a deeply personal experience.
Especially related to these topics, I was thinking about one of my coworkers my last job who has worked in transition houses and shelters for about 20 years now– she’s currently doing a training to learn how to facilitate somatic experiencing work for people, with one of the potentials here being supporting survivors of violence in addressing the way their body is experiencing trauma without having to ask them to talk about it, which could be retraumatizing. Of course, there’s a lot of reasons to be careful about the research and practices associated with somatic practice, but nevertheless I think there’s potential to take on some very profound and not easily articulated concepts. Thinking about this led me to the thought of war as a somatic experience, and with this week’s readings, militarization as a somatic experience. I thought Parashar used some very interesting evocative language in this week’s reading. Including prescribing the “unevenness” of militarization (125) “texture” (132) of relationships between states and citizens, and my personal favorite, the way that militarism “percolate[s]” into the everyday lives of people (126).
To me, the term percolate is particularly interesting, because just as militarism is described as seeping into the corners of life– the household, governance, community spaces– the experience of conflict, war, and militarism “percolates” into bodies, minds, and practices. Hedstrom describes the way that gendered labour, and particularly motherhood, is devalued, and yet is the labour that military institutions depend on in order to function– “This is a very real material contradiction in the political economy of gendered nationalism that women experience viscerally in their bodies and in their everyday lives, with implications far beyond the individual body.” (65). To me, this fits Parashar’s “percolating” perfectly, and stresses the point of war as a “visceral” experience that takes place on and beyond the body. I found Hedstrom’s points about symbolism, altruism, and extraction incredibly poignant. This was especially strong in her point that “women are used in insurgencies, but never randomly” (62). This resonated, because last week was the first time that I heard about menstruation prison protests in Northern Ireland, after spending my whole life hearing about dirty protests in Men’s prisons. Much to think about. These were some scattered thoughts about militarization, but to sum it all up my main reflections were about the body and Hedstrom’s women as symbols.
My questions are:
Where is “home and hearth” in militarisation?
What do you think about Hedstrom’s point about the “complicity of women” in enabling militarisation and social reproduction? How does this fit in our understanding of agency that we’ve been talking about in class?
Finally, I would echo Elena’s question from last week because I am not done thinking about it, but I will remix it- where is militarisation?
I find it challenging to untangle all my thoughts on this class and the readings and put them into coherent sentences but here is my best attempt,
This week’s reading made me think a lot about something Elena brought up in class last week that sparked discussion. Elena made a comment about bathrooms and a concern with the safety of women. I thought about this when reading Howell’s (2018) piece on martial politics. To me this reading spoke to public safety, more specifically who has the right to public safety. She writes, “the idea that policing is different from warfare (and requires different forces) is based on the positioning of threats as either internal or external” (p. 124). This framing was thought-provoking. Both police and militaries are upholding some form of social order. The American-Vietnam War is the first example to come to mind. America waged war against communism, which they saw as a direct threat to the global social and economic order.
Police forces are used in the same way domestically. Howell frames police forces as “a means of imposing social order” (p. 123). The comparison Howell makes between police forces and the military has caused me to further think about how I conceptualize war and conflict zones. The RCMP was originally founded in part to part control the Indigenous population as Canada expanded to settle western territories. Parashar (2018) explains that excessive militarism in post-colonial states is justified as “essential for sustaining their sovereign status and rule” (p. 127). Parashar frames the explanation the context of India, but connections can be drawn to Canada as well. After doing these readings I looked into the history of the RCMP and found that some historians agree that the RCMP was founded to protect and reinforce Canada’s sovereignty from Indigenous people. Canada I would argue still uses police force (including the RCMP) in part for this same cause. Indigenous population poses a direct threat to the sovereignty of the Canadian state. Therefore, this justification for militarization of police forces is not just related to “post-colonial third-world states” as Parashar (2018) outlines, but also colonial counties in the global north as Indigenous people continue to experience violence and suppression and the hands of Canadian police forces.
The readings this week, and the discussions so far in this class, have really made me rethink war and conflict zones. I have never thought of Canada as a conflict zone, but maybe that’s because as a white cis-gendered woman, I have never faced the degree of conflict or violence that other populations have. Growing up in Canada, war was always something that was far away but now I am starting to see war as something that exists within Canada but is waged only against certain populations. My privilege is to live outside of this conflict zone. I have understood that this institutional violence exists in Canada but this framing has made me think about it differently. I’ve begun to think about war not as defined geographically but as something that can exist in different places for different people.
My questions this week are vague and hard to answer but all of this has made me wonder if a truly peaceful nation can or does exist? Or are forms of war and conflict always present to some?
The BLM protests in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd encapsulated some of the final words in Suhair Hammad’s “First Writing Since”: “You are either with life, or against it/ Affirm life” (Hammad 5:41). And yet when protesters did affirm that Black lives matter, many were met with violence, with the US government going so far as to deploy the National Guard during a peaceful protest at the Lincoln Memorial. In contrast, when rioters stormed the Capitol in Washington on January 6th, the National Guard did not make an appearance until rioters had breached the Capitol (https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/police-response-black-lives-matter-protest-us-capitol/index.html).
I remember this glaringly obvious difference in treatment towards BLM protesters and Capitol rioters being a widely discussed on social media. There was immediacy in deploying excessive military power unto disproportionately Black and racialized bodies, versus a delayed and painfully mulled-over decision to deploy that same military force unto White rioters who actively intended harm. This difference in decision-making can be seen as a continuation of Howell’s concept of martial politics in the US police force. Slave patrols transition into a police force that touts social order and security as the veil under which White supremacy lies, whether it’s through Jim Crow-era segregation, the War on Drugs, or deployment of the National Guard on peaceful protestors (Howell 124). This use of police also algins with Parashar’s definition of “excessive militarism”: “a shift from the regulation of the military within the state to regulation by the military of the social order on behalf of the state” (Parashar 125).
My questions for this week are: as we work towards decolonization, anti-racism, and intersectional feminism, and more people come to realize the martial politics in hegemonic institutions, is it possible that the social order eventually does separate war and peace? If less violent institutions emerge over time as a push towards trying to separate war from our everyday lives, are they bound to be strong-armed into submission by excessive military force?
This week’s overarching concept of security resonated most with me. I keep coming back to the quote “We live with war” (Howell, 2018, pg. 119). Throughout the Howell article, I thought of Kamala Harris’ famous coconut meme—as in, the conflict-ridden world that we keep hearing about and referring to did not just simply fall out of a coconut tree. It, in fact, exists within the context of all in which we live and what came before us. Namely, of decades of colonial violence, as facilitated largely by militaristic forces. I appreciated the distinctions made between ‘martial politics’ and ‘militarization’ to point out how militaristic institutions do not just become war-like, but rather were built out of war. The concept of militarization assumes a peaceful norm before it, but for non-white and queer bodies, was there ever any peace to return to?
We read from Rozina Ali how 9/11 completely transformed the lives of Muslim and immigrant families through racialized laws and practices, shattering entire communities and senses of self, all in the name of ‘national security.’ I tied this to Parashar (2018) and their comments on nation-building. They highlighted how conflict can deepen the imagined boundaries between states, and how this takes place through strengthening national identity by identifying and villainizing an ‘other.’ And after Suheir Hummad, it is women who have had to swallow their grief as mostly Muslim men and boys are targeted through racism and xenophobia. Through excessive militarism, the state, in theory, should feel safer. But if that were true, why are so many people still so afraid? Through militarization, as a continuation of colonial violence against marginalised people, the notion of security has been redefined as justification for further violence.
Hedström (2018) also covered the idea of nation-building and the centrality of women’s bodies in these projects. Women facilitate wars and revolutions through different forms of gendered labour and yet remain undervalued and demeaned. The article points to how sexual violence in the context of conflict becomes an extension of conquest—a means to draw heavier lines between allies and the opposition. Consequently, women are treated as pawns in the nation-building game. Women are arranged in marriages for the purpose of reproducing the next generation of soldiers, denied access to reproductive rights, and their experiences of violence within resistance efforts go undetected—all in the name of security.
When my parents experienced martial law in the Philippines when they were in college, they witnessed their peers disappear or dragged and beaten in the streets they took to go to school. When they marched on EDSA during the People Power Revolution, they valiantly rejected a cruel dictatorship and military rule. They saw first-hand how military and police forces are something to fear. They understood how the guns that killed friends of friends were supplied by the US, and how the bodies behind the uniforms were trained by the very people who committed genocide against our own. They existed to preserve a social order embedded in our colonial history.
Questions:
1. To whom is security afforded? Whose sense of security must be compromised to uplift another’s?
2. How are perceptions of safety used to legitimise militarization or hide martial politics? How are they challenged?
I know this is coming out of left field, but hear me out. Reindeer herding.
I am writing this from Karasjok, Norway, home to about 2,500 people and the Sami Parliament of Norway’s home-base, Sámediggi. The Sami are the Indigenous people of Sápmi, an area of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and western Russia. I have had the privilege of working with some of the Sami human rights leaders for about a year under my MA supervisor, on co-developing research priorities and capacity. I am here for a conference about Indigenous governance and salmon research. It is estimated that across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, there are 100,000 Sami people, just over half of whom live in Norway. For the Sami, identity is rooted in language; one cannot claim Sami heritage unless they, their parents or their grandparents speak one of ten Sami languages. Further, Sami are often described based on their ancestral sustenance practice: Sea Sami, Forest Sami, Reindeer Sami, etc. (this week, a colleague of mine mentioned that he was adding another category: Conference Sami).
Reindeer Sami make up the majority of Sami siidas (communities connected by sustenance, politics and families) and represent the strongest continuance of practice; the rights of Reindeer Sami to their livelihood are better protected than those whose livelihoods come from the sea or the forest (though it’s a low bar). Today, Reindeer Sami are reindeer herders, and it is such a fundamental part of Sami society that contentions on reindeer herding shape the contours of politics and daily life. Reindeer herding brokers marriages, starts social conflict, and is so culturally-embedded that famously, the number-one faux pas made by those coming to Sápmi from elsewhere is asking someone how big their herd is. As you drive the roads, you often pass lavvu, temporary lodging for reindeer herders following their herds.
So, imagine my surprise, finding out today – that reindeer herding was a response to the colonization (they often say “Norwegianization”) and armed prohibition of the Sami practice of wild reindeer hunting, which pre-dates contact with the colonial state but was subsequently outlawed. In Canada, R. v. Van der Peet (1996) controversially established that a right to an Indigenous practice could only be protected if it were demonstrably integral to any given Indigenous community’s life pre-contact with colonization – as though once a European settler had entered the scene, no one else’s lifeways and rights were worthy of protection. However, here, in all the conversations I have gotten to have and stories I have gotten to listen to, no one has brought up a desire to return to wild reindeer hunting, only to have their rights to reindeer herding protected by the state.
Reading Howell, then, was particularly impactful. Norwegianization mirrors Canadian colonization a number of ways, and the “indivisibility of war and peace” (130) is so very apparent. Within the past century, police and military in Norway drove the single highway through Sápmi and burned everything the came across, sent children to residential schools and deliberately flooded villages with dams in the hopes of washing away Sami communities. And yet, today, Sami Parliaments and Sami people fight tooth and nail for the practice of reindeer herding – a practice that only became integral to their existence due to the militarized prohibition of wild reindeer hunting. The intertwining of these realities is striking to see and hear.
Further, we were able to participate in a tour of Sámediggi – which is like, the most beautiful parliament building I have ever seen. As we finished, the person giving us the tour explained that one of the photos on the wall is of Elsa Layla Renberg – the original chairwoman of what became the Sami Parliament – in 1917. The person giving the tour explained that in Sami politics, women have always been at the forefront. Women complete postsecondary education at a higher rate and make up most of the parliament. The past three Sami Parliament of Norway presidents have been women. Some in the room were impressed – and it is, impressive. But the reality is that this reflects the legacies of colonization on Sami men, who die by suicide at a rate three times the national average – and have for as long as data has been collected. As I read Hedström, I thought of how to marry the two realities – women are the body politic here. Yet, as so much of governance (estimated 80% by our tour guide) revolves around resource rights, the realm of men, the “women are keeping the armed revolution alive by virtue of their gendered labour” (64) all the same – even though the war and the labour look different than we might expect.
This was kind of a downer so let me also tell you that I just stepped out from the formal dinner to finish this blog post. At the dinner, Athabaskan and Aleut women of Alaska and the Yukon, and Indigenous women of Kamchatka (Russia) – who had never met – found commonality in a song passed down through generations. The consistency in the generational teachings was so detailed that the women danced together in what looked like perfect choreography. This morning, another faculty member from UBC and her graduate student took the time to explain Truth and Reconciliation Day and why we wear orange shirts. Tonight, the Sámediggi is lit up in bright orange. Harkening back to last week – resistance will always find a way.
Questions:
1. What shapes our view of “gendered labour”? What are the expectations we have of it, and what kinds of contexts do we imagine it being most prevelant in?
2. Following up on “where is war” – who is part of a war? What should we, as policy practitioners and researchers, due to expand our imaginings of what people look like when they are at war?
Finally, some links:
Sámediggi: https://imgur.com/a/eC7t3Hy
Elsa Layla Renberg: https://imgur.com/a/uKESbSk
My militarized “object”: https://imgur.com/72gflRD
This week’s resources made me reflect on the various ways I’ve perceived and misunderstood war for my entire life. Before enrolling in this class, I always thought of war as something that was clearly defined. In last week’s class, I even caught myself saying that despite ongoing violence in disputed territories between India and Pakistan, the two countries were not in a “formal” war. My prior understandings of war were rooted in the false presumptions of a peaceful liberal order that Howell criticized, and my ignorant perceptions rested on formal statements by high-level politicians and declarations by powerful Western governments in the Global North. While I understood the long-lasting and intergenerational impacts of war, I had somehow thought of them as having a clear “before” and “after.”
Despite growing up in Thailand and living through two military coups, I think had normalized the link the political instability and the presence of police and military forces. I had also seen it as a symptom of the power struggle between high-profile warring political parties and candidates, instead of considering how marginalized groups were being affected and silenced through the process. Additionally, my dad was a politician in the liberal party during these years and would be subject to several safety precautions, sometimes having to flee to safehouses or having a security detail. My childhood home was broken into, documents were stolen, and there’s a long list of other stories relating to my family’s safety that I think I was too young enough to comprehend at the time. As such, despite having direct experience with militarization and martial politics, I personalized the entire experience through the experience of a higher-ranking politician and failed to think about its broader implications. Howell’s article helped shift things into perspective for me: It very clearly illustrated how “before and after” thinking fails to consider the “war-like relations of force perpetrated against populations deemed to be a threat to civil order or the health of the population, especially along the lines of race, Indigeneity, disability, gender, sexuality, and class” (Howell, 118).
Upon listening to the 60 words Radio Lab episode, I also immediately realized how formal declarations of war and the authorization for the use of violence were justified by ill-defined legal jargon framed in the name of national security. The episode highlighted how definitions of war rest in the hands of a few singular people in governments to “protect” their nation and failed to address the voices that were being silenced in the process. The episode also left me wondering, are declarations of war from governments in countries perceived as less powerful or in the Global South made in similar ways?
The Parashar reading addressed this in the Indian context. They wrote about the similar deployment of laws designed to protect the fragile state, and how the dominance of the nation-state is reinstated, “by ensuring all local and global issues are considered in relation to the sovereignty and the integrity of the nation-state” (Parashar, 126). In combination with the other readings, it is made abundantly clear that national security becomes synonymous with military strength, prioritizing male and other privileged groups and rendering gendered, sexed, Indigenous, racialized, and other marginalized people invisible.
Questions:
How can we distinguish and celebrate cultural traditions and expectations for women living in conflict zones from their complicity in gendered practices? Is it possible for both to exist if national security rests on the gendered practices of women?
A quick note before I start on my actual reflection, or maybe it is part of how I engaged with this week’s readings, is that the way the podcast was edited particularly at the beginning and in the use of the archival clips sounded very satisfying. It was almost like a poem, with people finishing each other’s sentences. All while building up the tension till the 60 words that are the basis of the podcast were read.
The American motto “Never forget” in the years that have followed 9/11 are the truest words I have ever heard in my life. The US has not let the world forget what happened that day, and even 13 years after the fact every single year there are documentaries replayed over and over again of that day and social media is filled with memoriam posts. I have to say, I barely remember what happened on Sept. 11th 2001; I was about to turn 4 years old, had just begun kindergarten, but I remember asking my grandma if she had seen on TV the two planes that crashed into the Twin Towers. And she said “yes, but don’t talk about it”. To me, it did not make any sense why nobody was talking about what had happened, but it really did not have a lot of effect in my daily life. This was early 2000’s Mexico, I was so young and I don’t think my parents saw the need to explain to a toddler what terrorism or who Osama Bin-Laden was. And even in the immediate years that followed, when the US invaded Iraq, I did not learn of the true impact 9/11 had in world politics until I started studying it in middle school. The podcast really highlighted the way State leaders, in this case US presidents, have used language as a way of justifying war and violence. By having such a broad definition of what constitutes as “necessary and appropriate force”, Congress basically gave former President Bush an ample spectrum of things he could do on his war on terror. What was also highlight briefly but something that I go back to, is the use of “organizations or persons” as entities that can wage war against the US. Organizations eventually went to mean Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but the emphasis on “persons” definitely drew my attention. In reflecting more on the legacy on 9/11, I am also reflecting on the rise of islamophobia that arguably could be backtracked to 9/11 and the US response. The poem “First Writing Since” by Suheir Hammad I think examines perfectly the way Muslim and Arab people have been made the perpetrators of many of the attacks that have taken place in the Western world ever since. The phrase “innocent until proven guilty” was thrown away and instead, as Rozina Ali points out in her Twitter thread, it was “guilty until proven there is no link to terrorism”.
Heldström’s article on the role of women and the process of militarization, points out the ways in which women have contributed to war and the militarization process through gendered expectations in the household. However, Heldström also points out how the same stereotypical gender roles, such as women’s roles as grandmothers and mothers, have rejected the militarization process. Her example of the Argentinian women demanding an answer on what happened to their children under the military junta, reminds of what has happened in Mexico with the missing and murdered women. Arguably, the whole movement of #NiUnaMenos back in 2008, when Marisela Escobedo spent almost two years protesting that the State should apprehend her daughter’s killer, after a jury declared he was not guilty even with sufficient evidence to prove that he was the killer. Marisela was murdered in front of the Government Palace in Chihuahua. Impunity is almost its own war in Mexico, with government officials rarely following the law and most crimes, particularly those that involve women, go “unsolved” or not even investigated. I then reflect on my own experiences growing up in Mexico. I grew up in a middle-high income environment, I went to school with people who are daughters or sons of some of the richest and most influential men in Mexico, and one would think we would be so far removed from the violence in Mexico and for the most part we were. But I still remember growing up during Felipe Calderon’s presidency, who militarized the entire country to fight a “war” on drugs. Since kidnappings and extortions were an everyday occurrence, one of the ways they told us to keep us safe was to never save our family members in our phone contacts with “mom” or “dad” or anything that could indicate a family connection. We saved them under their names… to this day, I still have my parents contacts under their names.
Question:
How are civilians embedded in a militarization process without necessarily realizing they are part of this state?
How has the education of history, wars, and security been used as a tool in the militarization of any given country?
I do not know much about war. I do not know what historically defines it or what differentiates it from what it used to be and what it is currently understood as. However, the 60 Words podcast confirmed what I did know about war: that in many cases, it could have been avoided (loosely speaking) through conversation, empathy, and understanding those who are not like us—rather than leading with fear of retaliation or anger to prevent future attacks. Declaring war to avoid a future war? That doesn’t seem right. Of all the wars initiated by nation-states that I have learned about through family or formal education, there appears to be a common thread of power struggles and misunderstandings driving these conflicts. Another consistent aspect is the devastating impact on civilians, particularly women and children, who often become the “victims” of war.
The podcast highlighted the ambiguity of modern warfare and reflected on the difficulty of ending a “war” that is so loosely defined. Unlike traditional wars with clear objectives and formal agreements to signal peace, today’s conflicts are often ongoing, with no definitive victories or resolutions. When terms like “war” are applied to broad, poorly defined threats, such as terrorism, it creates a perpetual state of conflict where the line between wartime and peacetime is blurred. In many cases, the U.S. acts as the primary decider of war, force, and militarism. We saw it in World War II with Hiroshima, in the 1950s with Vietnam over the fear of communism, and post-9/11, when the entire MENA region was villainized, mainly targeting Muslims. Muslim women, especially those wearing hijabs, were disproportionately affected as racialization and othering of Arabs and Middle Easterners became widespread.
In thinking about war, militarization, and women, the roles women take are simplified either as victims or entirely sidelined, negating their existence as agents. However, I did not realize the extent to which women were involved in sustaining wars, as highlighted by Jenny Hedström’s idea of militarized social reproduction, emphasizing that women’s everyday labour keeps militarization going. And it makes sense, but the physical and emotional roles women have in supporting militarization. Even in my everyday thinking of war, I assign primary gender roles to men – contributing to the stereotype continuously enforced. What I found to be interesting is how women’s symbolic roles play a large part in justifying war, having their bodies be representative of their nation’s vulnerability, with the threat of sexual violence legitimizing or validating armed resistance. There’s an irony of women being seen as needing protection but also being leveraged to fuel the militarization that threatens them.
Alison Howell’s concept of martial politics further complicates this narrative by demonstrating that war-like relations are heavily embedded in civilian institutions, including judicial, law enforcement, and educational institutions. This proves that militarization isn’t just an external force invading peaceful spaces but is woven into the fabric of our social structures. Women’s labour is closely linked to these institutional dynamics, either supporting or advocating against it.
My questions:
How do women’s roles in supporting or resisting war complicate the idea that militarization is solely a male-driven process? (i.e. Kamala sending ~$9 billion to support Israel’s occupation of Palestine). Does this involvement in war contribute to the victimization or villainization of women? Or does their involvement present a “vulnerable” and “positively emotional” side of the war that contributes to its support?
Alison’s Martial Politics provides a compelling analysis of how everyday situations at home are similar to war. One of the most intriguing aspects of the article is the author’s discussion on how intersectionality is inseparable from these war-like situations. Alison argues that policing has not merely become militarized but has always been inherently war-like, functioning as part of a broader system of martial politics aimed at controlling and marginalizing racialized, Indigenous, disabled, and queer communities to uphold liberal order.
I find this analysis particularly resonant with the situation in India, where caste, religion and gender systems play a powerful role in targeting scheduled communities and minority groups. These groups are often deliberately kept most vulnerable and marginalized, with the aim of maintaining social and liberal order in the country. The intersection of caste, gender, and religion in India mirrors the broader themes of martial politics, as they are used to reinforce existing hierarchies and sustain systemic oppression.
The 60 words in the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), enacted in response to the 9/11 attacks, serve as a striking example of how the U.S. took a firm stand on combating terrorism. By granting itself the authority to use force against countries like Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of dismantling terrorist networks, the U.S. overlooked the long-term effects of these hasty reactions. What is particularly surprising is the strong stance taken by Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who foresaw the potential for prolonged war and was the only member of Congress to vote against the AUMF. These 60 words, which authorized the use of “all necessary force” against anyone connected to the 9/11 attacks, have led to one of America’s longest and most militarized conflicts, resulting in significant civilian casualties. This situation can be likened to a household dynamic where men, assuming a self-authorized position of power, justify domestic violence against women.
Jenny’s discussion on Militarised Social Reproduction and how militarization affects everyday life, especially within domestic spaces and labor dynamics, is particularly thought-provoking. The research on military wives highlights how militarization infiltrates homes through emotional and relational connections, even when far from the battlefield. Additionally, Cynthia Enloe’s theory, which emphasizes that militarization is deeply rooted in gender assumptions and perpetuated by both state and private actors, reveals another hard truth. This analysis reminds me of my close friend, a military wife, who sacrificed her passionate career to support her soldier husband. He was stationed at the border, and she had to endure her pregnancy journey without his support, facing the daily emotional toll of not knowing about his well-being on the battlefield. The sacrifices military wives make are invaluable and often go unnoticed, as research on military life rarely focuses on the gendered aspects of these experiences.
Swati’s discussion of excessive militarism in India, which emerged in the post-Cold War era as a result of globalization, is indeed surprising to me. The author highlights how this militarism has influenced governance and everyday life. It is maintained by contrasting national security with external “others” and by blending military practices with civil governance. This militarism operates through draconian laws that suspend civil rights, exert militaristic influence on non-military spheres such as politics and education, and addresses local and global conflicts through militarized solutions, normalizing a state of permanent wartime discipline.
I can relate this to a chapter in my social studies curriculum where I was taught about militaristic narratives and their impact on perceptions of military and defense. In India, the emphasis on the military’s role is pervasive; it is often portrayed as essential for guarding against immediate rivals. As a result, in some states, it is a common belief that every household should encourage at least one child to pursue a career in the military.
Questions that I have:
1. Why is the military viewed as the ultimate source of power in a nation? Who grants them this authority, and what contributes to their sense of power? Is it primarily due to the destructive nature of their access and possession to weapons, or is it the individuals who yield this authority to assert their dominance?
2. If it takes only 60 words for the USA to justify launching a war against so-called terrorist groups, does this imply that words have more power than weapons? If language and words hold such influence, why not research papers are unable to influence peace and security?
This week’s readings brought up many important issues and contributing factors or systems within the realm of martial politics and militarization, but I was particularly struck by Howell’s discussion of the University as a site of martial politics. “The university was never such a pure site. Many American universities were built with slave labor or its proceeds (Brown University Committee on Slavery and Justice n.d.), and from the outset have contributed vitally to colonization and White supremacy.”, This reading made me think about recent Protest on university campuses in support of Palestine.
In the past year, we have seen the covert violence and militarization which universities are founded upon become overt on a mass scale. Students have had police called on them, been attacked by the National Guard, had their degrees withheld due to their organizing; standing up and speaking out against a genocide means students are denied a right to education. This kind of violence against students has been happening for decades, but with the growth of social media, we can now recognize how to exist on a larger scale and has become more visible to greater populations. We are reminded that Universities are for profit institutions, funded by investments in military and war.
These institutions refuse to speak out against Israel, or to even recognize that there is a genocide occurring, let alone divest from this kind of military violence, because it is integral to their existence. In a recent interview discussing attacks in Lebanon, Noam Chomsky stated “The United States considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization but the term terrorism is used by the great powers simply to refer to forms of violence of which they disapprove”(Chomsky, 2024). In this weeks content I am reminded that the divisions between war, revolution, and terrorism are so often a matter of perspective. Great powers shape this perspective through a lens of white supremacy, racism, classism, sexism, and ablism.
Not only do the institutions fund and support this kind of martial politic, it is no coincidence that these are the same institutions which are responsible for education of the youth. I consider my own education with regards to the genocide of Indigenous people in Canada, as a white child growing up in Canada. So much of the history I was provided with was white washed, or erased entirely. The institutions which enact such violence are able to hide the violence as history continues. Only when mass attention is drawn to these atrocities does any change occur, and this change is slow and painstaking. Even today, in 2024, on Truth and Reconciliation Day, only 13 of 94 calls to action have been completed, and none of these were completed in the past year. According to the Yellowhead Institute, of the remaining calls to action, none are in progress (Yellowhead Institute, 2023). I am reminded of the power of community but simultaneously, the limits faced by those who push back against a status quo.
Questions:
1. Who gets to determine the line drawn between war and terrorism; who and how do we decide what kind of violence is acceptable or justifiable?
2. How are educational institutions weaponized by military forces and martial politics.
I felt that this week’s readings built very naturally on the readings and discussions we had last week about war in the everyday. Notably, the question of “where is war?” I found that Howell’s analysis of how war pervades the liberal order extended the arena of war beyond a conflict zone. The idea of militarism being ingrained in our society demonstrates how war is all around, and we can enable and support it in ways we may not even be aware of. I found this was illustrated well through Hedström’s framework for understanding militarized social reproduction, notably, the gendered labour of enabling, supporting, symbolizing, legitimizing, and rejecting, that can contribute to or challenge militarization. While this was a distinctly gendered analysis, I think it can be extended to illustrate how pervasive militarism is in everyday life and seemingly routine actions. War really is in the everyday. Hedström’s analysis illustrates how even by simply existing, women’s bodies are used to justify and enable militarism through “the use of femininity to legitimize armed conflict,” and the portrayal of women as “beautiful souls” who represent “home and hearth” (p.69). The use of people’s bodies to justify a state of militarization is dehumanizing, further illustrated by Suheir Hammad’s poem, wherein she underscores the deep connections between individual stories and the forces of militarization that seek to erase them.
In the same way that Howell’s work extends the arena of war, placing ‘militarization’ in the context of an already martial society, the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed in the wake of the September 11 attacks, expanded the scope of military engagement beyond traditional battlefields, legitimizing a state of perpetual conflict. This validates Howell’s concept of ‘martial politics’, which challenges the idea that in the process of militarization, “the exception (war) encroaches on the norm (peace)” (p. 118). Rather, policies like AUMF simply institutionalized this already intertwined relationship. This was supported by Parashar’s analysis of post-colonial anxiety and militarization. I was particularly interested in the idea of democratization of security, and how the citizenry is transformed to support militarism as a tool for security and consequent development. In the North American context, I’m reminded of the relationship between militarism and morality, with militarism used to represent heroism in extremely popular franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or even cop shows like Brooklyn 99. Writing this on Truth and Reconciliation Day, I’m reminded of how surprised some people are when they hear stories of violence from the RCMP. For instance, conversations with family members after a recent headline detailing eight isolated murders of Indigenous people by the police within days of one another: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-police-indigenous-deaths-accountability/. As Howell points out, this is not an instance of increased militarization from the Canadian police, but rather, the control and often removal of Indigenous peoples is cemented in the very foundation of a colonial policing system. In her words, they serve as “security forces for settler colonialism” (123).
My questions for the week:
In what ways do contemporary cultural representations of militarism, such as those found in the Marvel Cinematic Universe or police dramas shape public perceptions of security and morality? How might these narratives influence societal attitudes towards state violence, especially in the context of ongoing issues like Indigenous rights and systemic racism?
Reflecting on the example of the RCMP and the recent headlines surrounding violence against Indigenous people, what role does public perception play in legitimizing the militarization or martial politics of policing, particularly in relation to Indigenous communities in Canada, and how can truth and reconciliation function in a state so steeped in martial politics?
Howell does explain that there’s a history of ‘the militarization of police’ all the way back to chattel slavery, through the Jim Crow era, and to contemporary mass incarceration (Howell, 2018, p. 122), which would obviously include the history of the Black Panther Party (BPP). However, I would have loved for the author to bring up the history of the party even briefly in their article as I believe it is an important piece of history in dealing with the militarization of the American police. Whenever I think of policing the militarized police, I think of the BPP due to how members armed themselves to keep their communities safe from police brutality. I was surprised the Party was never mentioned in the article.
I had never heard of the term “gender washing” before (I am ashamed to admit that), so Jester & Walter’s article was an interesting read. I instantly noticed a point in the article that we have discussed before in class: “the importance of the everyday” (Jester & Walter, 2024, p. 4) when the authors explain what feminist Security Studies focus on. I very much appreciated the breakdown in different varieties of gender washing by the authors on page 7.
I appreciated the content analysis that the authors were engaged in to analyze and understand how arms manufacturers gender wash war. Social media posts by brands, corporations, and companies are indeed just ways of advertising themselves to the public. Reading their analysis of how masculinist companies take advantage of hashtags like IWD (International Women’s Day) to misleadingly push and promote their false idea of “empowerment”, “equality”, and “progress”, to women and girls, especially those in the Global South is disheartening.
Parashar’s article that describes how local elites in states in the ‘Third World’ have continued re-asserting colonial-style rule over their people via a strong military and militarization even after independence which contributes to postcolonial anxiety (Parashar, 2018, p. 127). I immediately drew a comparison with the contemporary RCMP from this article. The origins of the RCMP come from Canada’s colonial past and their use was to further the colonial interests of the British and French settlers. Even though Canada today is independent and not a direct subject to a European empire, the RCMP remains the same as it did when it was created as one of many tools to genocide Indigenous peoples and forcefully settle their land. When we understand Parashar’s explanation and definition of ‘postcolonial anxiety’ one can further make a comparison that within Canada, a Western nation, Indigenous and First Nations, along with other racialized individuals, suffer from persistent postcolonial anxiety as many colonial institutions from the past remain unchanged today. Individuals, mostly Westerners, who have not had a brutal and bloody history with Canadian institutions would not most likely not suffer from postcolonial anxiety even though both groups of Canadians live in the same country (and in the ‘First World’).
My question that was invoked by Jester & Walter’s article was: What exactly is an “ethical arms trade”? How can an arms trade be “ethical”? I would think that all arms trades are unethical by default as they would involve weapons that have the potential to destroy people’s lives.
As I read this week’s readings, I found myself considering how easy it is to fall into thinking in binaries.
This came up in the Hedstrom reading, in the discussion of gender norms. Under the discussion of supporting as a form of militarized social reproduction, Hedstrom asks, “if women were naturally inclined to engage in emotional labour and prefer it to soldering, [sic] why would this work need to be managed and demarcated as separate from soldiering? This narrative mask [sic] the not-insignificant amount of work required to both manage the boundaries of gendered and encourage women to engage in it for no, or next to no, profit” (Hedstrom, 2022, 67).
I would love to hear how others interpreted this question, but for me Hedstrom raises two salient issues. First is the question of why, if gender roles are supposedly innate predispositions (which of course they aren’t), does the social reproduction of them require so much effort? Second, if women were naturally inclined to engage in emotional labour and prefer it to soldiering, and women’s primary responsibility is within the home, why are women’s units organized at all?
This questioning of binaries also surfaced in the Howell reading, which questioned the war/peace binary that is implied within the concept of militarization as well as the linear before/after binary that upholds it. The question (raised originally by Enloe and quoted by Howell), “how do they militarize a can of soup?” (119) reads almost like a bad joke when you consider the answer is “it was already militarized.”
This train of thought led me down a few other paths, including: how would Canada come to be militarized?/In what ways is Canada already militarized? While I don’t have the word count to deconstruct the ways in which this country is already militarized, “what if” I found myself asking in the context of the Hedstrom reading is around the idea of nation-building through domestic reproduction and the ways in which war co-opts this reproduction. I remember commonly being told growing up that women began to get jobs outside of the home around the time of WWII, when the men went off to war, leaving women to take up the jobs they left behind and that the war created (like making weaponry). However, if women now largely work outside of the home and still produce much of the domestic labour, what more could be co-opted should Canada become increasingly militarized?
Another point I considered was in the context of Hedstrom, again, when women making uniforms was discussed. Does the uniform make the soldier? And if so, what does that imply for the one who makes the uniform?
Finally, what I think was a typo in the first quote I listed (soldering rather than soldiering) gave me pause. Soldering is the process of joining two metals together. In the context of the article, reproductive labour can also be understood as joinery – joining pieces of fabric together to make a uniform, for example, or joining one generation to the next by bearing children.
Last week I made a very confusingly phrased point about how my view of conflict feels like it’s changing visually in my head, and while I don’t particularly know if I have figured out how to clarify this yet, I think Elena’s question “Where is war?” (great question) is helping me start to untangle that. I’ve heard the terms “positive peace” and “negative peace” before, so I had some experience with the academic terms used to describe the ways that violence and conflict persist for some people long after an official conflict is declared over, whether that’s due to race, gender, experiences with colonialism, sexuality, etc. I’ve been thinking a lot this week, especially with the militarization readings we’re doing, about what I’m describing as “circles of war and conflict”, where there is conflict happening on and in the body, there is conflict happening in a household, community, state, international sphere. The body as a site of war keeps coming up for me, and especially the idea of security as a deeply personal experience.
Especially related to these topics, I was thinking about one of my coworkers my last job who has worked in transition houses and shelters for about 20 years now– she’s currently doing a training to learn how to facilitate somatic experiencing work for people, with one of the potentials here being supporting survivors of violence in addressing the way their body is experiencing trauma without having to ask them to talk about it, which could be retraumatizing. Of course, there’s a lot of reasons to be careful about the research and practices associated with somatic practice, but nevertheless I think there’s potential to take on some very profound and not easily articulated concepts. Thinking about this led me to the thought of war as a somatic experience, and with this week’s readings, militarization as a somatic experience. I thought Parashar used some very interesting evocative language in this week’s reading. Including prescribing the “unevenness” of militarization (125) “texture” (132) of relationships between states and citizens, and my personal favorite, the way that militarism “percolate[s]” into the everyday lives of people (126).
To me, the term percolate is particularly interesting, because just as militarism is described as seeping into the corners of life– the household, governance, community spaces– the experience of conflict, war, and militarism “percolates” into bodies, minds, and practices. Hedstrom describes the way that gendered labour, and particularly motherhood, is devalued, and yet is the labour that military institutions depend on in order to function– “This is a very real material contradiction in the political economy of gendered nationalism that women experience viscerally in their bodies and in their everyday lives, with implications far beyond the individual body.” (65). To me, this fits Parashar’s “percolating” perfectly, and stresses the point of war as a “visceral” experience that takes place on and beyond the body. I found Hedstrom’s points about symbolism, altruism, and extraction incredibly poignant. This was especially strong in her point that “women are used in insurgencies, but never randomly” (62). This resonated, because last week was the first time that I heard about menstruation prison protests in Northern Ireland, after spending my whole life hearing about dirty protests in Men’s prisons. Much to think about. These were some scattered thoughts about militarization, but to sum it all up my main reflections were about the body and Hedstrom’s women as symbols.
My questions are:
Where is “home and hearth” in militarisation?
What do you think about Hedstrom’s point about the “complicity of women” in enabling militarisation and social reproduction? How does this fit in our understanding of agency that we’ve been talking about in class?
Finally, I would echo Elena’s question from last week because I am not done thinking about it, but I will remix it- where is militarisation?
I find it challenging to untangle all my thoughts on this class and the readings and put them into coherent sentences but here is my best attempt,
This week’s reading made me think a lot about something Elena brought up in class last week that sparked discussion. Elena made a comment about bathrooms and a concern with the safety of women. I thought about this when reading Howell’s (2018) piece on martial politics. To me this reading spoke to public safety, more specifically who has the right to public safety. She writes, “the idea that policing is different from warfare (and requires different forces) is based on the positioning of threats as either internal or external” (p. 124). This framing was thought-provoking. Both police and militaries are upholding some form of social order. The American-Vietnam War is the first example to come to mind. America waged war against communism, which they saw as a direct threat to the global social and economic order.
Police forces are used in the same way domestically. Howell frames police forces as “a means of imposing social order” (p. 123). The comparison Howell makes between police forces and the military has caused me to further think about how I conceptualize war and conflict zones. The RCMP was originally founded in part to part control the Indigenous population as Canada expanded to settle western territories. Parashar (2018) explains that excessive militarism in post-colonial states is justified as “essential for sustaining their sovereign status and rule” (p. 127). Parashar frames the explanation the context of India, but connections can be drawn to Canada as well. After doing these readings I looked into the history of the RCMP and found that some historians agree that the RCMP was founded to protect and reinforce Canada’s sovereignty from Indigenous people. Canada I would argue still uses police force (including the RCMP) in part for this same cause. Indigenous population poses a direct threat to the sovereignty of the Canadian state. Therefore, this justification for militarization of police forces is not just related to “post-colonial third-world states” as Parashar (2018) outlines, but also colonial counties in the global north as Indigenous people continue to experience violence and suppression and the hands of Canadian police forces.
The readings this week, and the discussions so far in this class, have really made me rethink war and conflict zones. I have never thought of Canada as a conflict zone, but maybe that’s because as a white cis-gendered woman, I have never faced the degree of conflict or violence that other populations have. Growing up in Canada, war was always something that was far away but now I am starting to see war as something that exists within Canada but is waged only against certain populations. My privilege is to live outside of this conflict zone. I have understood that this institutional violence exists in Canada but this framing has made me think about it differently. I’ve begun to think about war not as defined geographically but as something that can exist in different places for different people.
My questions this week are vague and hard to answer but all of this has made me wonder if a truly peaceful nation can or does exist? Or are forms of war and conflict always present to some?
The BLM protests in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd encapsulated some of the final words in Suhair Hammad’s “First Writing Since”: “You are either with life, or against it/ Affirm life” (Hammad 5:41). And yet when protesters did affirm that Black lives matter, many were met with violence, with the US government going so far as to deploy the National Guard during a peaceful protest at the Lincoln Memorial. In contrast, when rioters stormed the Capitol in Washington on January 6th, the National Guard did not make an appearance until rioters had breached the Capitol (https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/police-response-black-lives-matter-protest-us-capitol/index.html).
I remember this glaringly obvious difference in treatment towards BLM protesters and Capitol rioters being a widely discussed on social media. There was immediacy in deploying excessive military power unto disproportionately Black and racialized bodies, versus a delayed and painfully mulled-over decision to deploy that same military force unto White rioters who actively intended harm. This difference in decision-making can be seen as a continuation of Howell’s concept of martial politics in the US police force. Slave patrols transition into a police force that touts social order and security as the veil under which White supremacy lies, whether it’s through Jim Crow-era segregation, the War on Drugs, or deployment of the National Guard on peaceful protestors (Howell 124). This use of police also algins with Parashar’s definition of “excessive militarism”: “a shift from the regulation of the military within the state to regulation by the military of the social order on behalf of the state” (Parashar 125).
My questions for this week are: as we work towards decolonization, anti-racism, and intersectional feminism, and more people come to realize the martial politics in hegemonic institutions, is it possible that the social order eventually does separate war and peace? If less violent institutions emerge over time as a push towards trying to separate war from our everyday lives, are they bound to be strong-armed into submission by excessive military force?