Feeling and militarism at Ms Veteran America

Welland, Julia

doi:10.1080/14616742.2020.1858719

Cited by 12 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…A focus on female veteran identity and cultural representation has also provided a corrective to the traditional focus on men and military masculinities (Tasker, 2011). Women veterans might have good reasons to hold contradictory feelings about their military service (especially those who have experienced sexual trauma or discrimination during their military careers), and they can feel unrecognized and unacknowledged by the public (Welland, 2021). Finally, there are studies on public opinion (Latter et al, 2018;Phillips, 2020), audience responses (Pitchford-Hyde, 2022) and veterans' own perspectives on public or media perceptions (Parry and Thumim, 2017;Schmidt, 2020;Smith and True, 2014).…”

Section: Veterans In the Media And On The Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

‘We may have bad days . . . that doesn’t make us killers’: How military veterans perceive contemporary British media representations of military and post-military life

Parry

Pitchford-Hyde

2022

Media, War & Conflict

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Over the last two decades of long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the media’s attention on military veterans in the UK has been characterized by a series of shifts: from a focus on combat operations; to initiatives to support transition to civilian life; and finally to a largely invisible presence of veteran issues in the mediated public sphere. This article presents findings from an online qualitative survey conducted with British veterans in 2020. The authors’ primary focus is on how veterans express their concerns when asked about varied televised representations of military and post-military experience. How did the respondents perceive differences across television genres (drama, news, reality TV), and how did this affect their engagement? How do they see their veteran identity reflected back at them through popular media culture? There is a growing research interest in ‘veteran studies’ from a range of disciplines, but the relationship between veteran identity and perceptions of (post)-military representations remains largely under-researched, at least in the UK context. One concern is that negative or misleading stereotypes of veterans among publics could hinder their successful reintegration into society, but the authors are interested in how veterans make sense of such representations across popular media culture, how they imagine the ‘general public’ audience in their reflections, and the nature of veteran identity they project within the survey responses. This study finds that anxieties about ‘mad, bad or sad’ stereotypical representations of veterans continue, but the diversity within its findings also reaffirms the importance of not treating veterans as a homogeneous group in research.

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Section: Veterans In the Media And On The Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

‘We may have bad days . . . that doesn’t make us killers’: How military veterans perceive contemporary British media representations of military and post-military life

Parry

Pitchford-Hyde

2022

Media, War & Conflict

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“…Feminist critical military scholars have begun to explore the affects of militarism (Åhäll, 2018Chisholm & Ketola, 2020;Rashid, 2020;Reeves, 2020;Wegner, 2021b;Welland, 2021).…”

Section: Militarisms' Affectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The affective concept of cruel optimism -where the pursuit of the 'good life' results in suffering -allows Chisholm and Ketola to supplement discussion of political and economic realities for Gurkha communities by exploring how the affects -of hope, pride, and others -tied to militarism encourage pursuit of military service when the harsh realities of likely failure might otherwise discourage it. In another vein, Julia Welland (2021) explores how the Ms. Veteran America pageant allows United States military servicewomen who feel alienated and isolated from masculine military culture and structures to feel the promise of US militarism affectively -an experience Welland does not label as reparative, but which I interpret as repairing the frayed relation between servicewomen and the US military.…”

Section: Militarisms' Affectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Veteran America pageant allows United States military servicewomen who feel alienated and isolated from masculine military culture and structures to feel the promise of US militarism affectively -an experience Welland does not label as reparative, but which I interpret as repairing the frayed relation between servicewomen and the US military. Welland (2021) and Chisholm and Ketola's (2020) work demonstrates how militarism's affects work to bind individuals to the larger military project through emotional resonance.…”

Section: Militarisms' Affectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Additionally, empirical work grounded in various civilian experiences of, for example, women exploited or assaulted by peacekeepers during aid missions (C. King et al, 2020;Nordås & Rustad, 2013;Vahedi et al, 2021) or practices of military memorialization (Partis-Jennings, 2020;Reeves, 2020;Wegner, 2021b), usefully illuminate how discourses and ideologies play out on the ground. Recent explorations of embodiment and affect, as discussed in chapters four and five, have begun to center the body and emotion in discussion of how militarism is felt, learned, reproduced and/or challenged, using ethnographic methods (McSorley, 2016;Partis-Jennings, 2020;Rashid, 2020;Wegner, 2021b) and interview methods (Chisholm & Ketola, 2020;Rashid, 2020;Welland, 2021). Ultimately, I put forth my study of the Canada Army Run, and participants' experiences competing in it, as a contribution to sport militarism and critical militarism studies, with the hope that my work deepens our understanding of how bodies come to know and to (re)produce military mythology, in large part through interpersonal engagement with various segments of the military apparatus, including servicepeople.…”

Section: Expanding the Sport Militarism Subfieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

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(Re)Producing military mythology at the Canada Army Run

Desjardins¹

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This thesis offers a novel exploration of militarism in amateur sport, wherein civilians are participants rather than spectators, thus allowing the body to be centered when exploring reproductions of militarism. I analyze the 2019 Canada Army Run -an annual road race organized and hosted by the Canadian Armed Forces -to explore how embodied interaction with the pro-military messaging saturating the event affects participants' political orientation to the Canadian military. I draw on ethnographic data gathered while running in the 5k race and attending pre-and post-race activities, as well as 40 semi-structured qualitative interviews with race participants and three interviews with event organizers. Theoretically, I utilize Barthes' (1972) work on mythology to conceptualize the ideological significance and political affects of military myth and explore the ways myth is circulated and produced at the Army Run.The most predominant Canadian Armed Forces myths described by participants are: having a standing, armed military is necessary and inevitable; the military is moral, only using force when necessary and primarily engaging in aid work; and the military is misunderstood by most civilians and as a result is under appreciated. These myths circulate at the Army Run in myriad ways. The opportunity to build civilian-military connections via interpersonal interaction was the event's most effective tactic in generating civilian support. The race expo facilitated interaction between civilian race attendees and military servicepeople who volunteered for or participated in the races, while featuring individual deceased veterans along the racecourse encouraged participants to see the military not as a faceless institution, but rather as the sum of its parts: individual servicepeople. Army Run participation notably impacted the orientation of civilian participants who had no strong attachment to the military prior to participating. For this group, participation inspired increased political support for the military, largely as a result of developing a perceived connection to the military.Ultimately, I argue that the Canada Army Run (re)produces myths of military necessity, morality, and under appreciation via participants' embodied engagement in military themed spaces and with military members. Through physical engagement in the Army Run's militarysaturated event space and interaction with military servicepeople, participants come to feel connected to the military, and it is through this felt connection that increased support is generated and attention is shifted away from military politics and practices and toward the interpersonal. The Army Run's presentation of a depoliticized, individualized Canadian Armed Forces allows for increased public support that remains constant as it is not grounded in the reality of military action, thus enabling the proliferation of military power and investment.

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The Affective Dimensions of Militarism in Schools: Methodological, Ethical and Political Implications

Zembylas

2023

British Journal of Educational Studies

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Feeling and militarism at Ms Veteran America

Cited by 12 publications

References 55 publications

‘We may have bad days . . . that doesn’t make us killers’: How military veterans perceive contemporary British media representations of military and post-military life

‘We may have bad days . . . that doesn’t make us killers’: How military veterans perceive contemporary British media representations of military and post-military life

(Re)Producing military mythology at the Canada Army Run

The Affective Dimensions of Militarism in Schools: Methodological, Ethical and Political Implications

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