Military masculinities

Andrea Thiis-Evensen meets Dr Claire Duncanson, a senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of Edinburgh, who talks about her studies of military masculinities, and the importance of looking at the political economy of building peace. 

TRANSCRIPT

Andrea Thiis-Evensen: Hey, my name is Andrea Thiis-Evensen, and welcome to Peace and Gender, a podcast about the people behind the research on gender, peace, and security. Who are they and why do they research these issues?

Claire Duncanson: You know, there is a real temptation to talk about women as being an alternative to men. The kind of idea, oh, well if women were in charge then we wouldn't have so many wars.

Andrea Thiis-Evensen: In this episode, you will meet Claire Duncanson.

Claire Duncanson:  I'm visiting here from the University of Edinburgh. I am a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Edinburgh.

Andrea Thiis-Evensen: Today, Claire will be talking about her studies on masculinities in British militaries and her focus on women and the political economy of building peace. In this episode, I am trying to figure out if there is a link between peace and gender.

[Music playing]

Claire started with a degree in Politics, Philosophy, and History. Then she did a Master in Peace Studies. After this, she started thinking about her PhD.

Claire Duncanson: I knew I wanted to combine my interests in gender and feminism with international development, human rights and international politics. I suppose initially I was thinking I would do something about the impact of international interventions, war, humanitarian intervention on women. But at the same time, I was aware that the world didn't necessarily need another white middle-class feminist going into war zones to try and tell that story. There were lots.

So, at the time - this was early-2000s - there were lots of the so-called new wars from the 1990s, lots of researching coming out of them about the gendered aspects but written by feminists from those parts of the world, which made more sense to me. So, I thought rather than do that, I would try and focus on the masculinities of those who were doing the intervention. You know, the masculinities of the interveners.

Andrea Thiis-Evensen: Claire decided to study changing masculinities in the British military.

Claire Duncanson: So, I was particularly interested in the question of whether militarised masculinities change when militaries and their operational environment changes. So, as militaries turn to focus, as many have, onto peace operations, peace support, humanitarian intervention, then what kind of impact does that have on militarised masculinities? Because for a long time the archetypal military masculinity has been associated with combat and force, the idea that war makes men and men make war. That has been thought to be one of the factors that have enabled recruitment of men to the military. You know, it's a chance to prove your toughness and your manhood.

So, I was really - yeah, in my work on the British military, in particular, it was really interesting, I think, that when you - so I did some interviews, some focus groups, but also spent a lot of time reading the autobiographies of British soldiers and military doctrine and training material. It seemed to me that when militaries are focused more on peace support in some ways soldiers find that very frustrating and emasculating. It's like this isn't why we joined up. We wanted to be the tough guys and yet we're tasked with doing this peace support stuff. Quite a lot of explicit reflection on how this was emasculating.

At the same time, that wasn't the only discourse you can see. You could also see a discourse where soldiers and the British military, in general, were constructing peacekeeping or peacebuilding as manly activity in the sense that anyone could be the tough guy but actually, it takes a real superior masculinity to be good at this peace support stuff. You need to be touch but also show restraint. You need to also have the kind of intelligence and communication skills, so it involves a bigger range of skills. I think in those defences of the peacekeeping role you saw this attempt to carve out maybe a superior military masculinity.

Andrea Thiis-Evensen: Claire argued that military masculinities have changed over the years and a new form of hegemonic masculinity has been created called the peace-builder masculinity. But this new emerging peace-builder masculinity that may sound very progressive brought with it some problems.

Claire Duncanson: Sometimes in the construction