Search citation statements
Paper Sections
Citation Types
Year Published
Publication Types
Relationship
Authors
Journals
Cold War military remnants and experiences have recently been turned into museums and tourist attractions in many European countries. Recognizing such memory making as essentially political, we examine the role of gender and sexuality in the making of a Cold War military heritage. Combining critical feminist and intersectional Cold War research with gender perspectives on military memory, this article contributes to feminist conceptualizations of the relationship between gendered security and the production of memory. By highlighting narratives and spatial, visual, and acoustic arrangements, we investigate state-sponsored museum displays of two national security crises in the Swedish context: the 1952 Soviet downing of a DC-3 airplane and the submarine hunts in the Baltic Sea in the early 1980s. The analysis reveals how gender works to construct a geopolitical outlook, enable emotional identifications, and restore national order. Heterosexuality and hierarchical gender norms emerge as prerequisites for national security. We argue that when visitors are encouraged to feel gendered national security, opportunities to critically reflect upon Cold War histories decrease, promoting the depoliticization of security politics and militarism.
Cold War military remnants and experiences have recently been turned into museums and tourist attractions in many European countries. Recognizing such memory making as essentially political, we examine the role of gender and sexuality in the making of a Cold War military heritage. Combining critical feminist and intersectional Cold War research with gender perspectives on military memory, this article contributes to feminist conceptualizations of the relationship between gendered security and the production of memory. By highlighting narratives and spatial, visual, and acoustic arrangements, we investigate state-sponsored museum displays of two national security crises in the Swedish context: the 1952 Soviet downing of a DC-3 airplane and the submarine hunts in the Baltic Sea in the early 1980s. The analysis reveals how gender works to construct a geopolitical outlook, enable emotional identifications, and restore national order. Heterosexuality and hierarchical gender norms emerge as prerequisites for national security. We argue that when visitors are encouraged to feel gendered national security, opportunities to critically reflect upon Cold War histories decrease, promoting the depoliticization of security politics and militarism.
This work examines support the troops discourses in the US and UK during the war on terror (2001–2010). These practices are important in their own right and a window into a broader transformation in liberal military-society relations. Few people now serve in the armed forces but gendered and sexualized cultural narratives of warfare continue to reproduce a strong connection between military service, citizenship, and normative heteromasculinity—the liberal military contract. It argues that supporting the troops reflects a gendered civilian anxiety arising from non-service in wartime, wherein normative citizenship and normative masculinity are apparently inaccessible to a large number of citizens. The book works through the ways that support the troops discourses attempt to address and resolve this anxiety by recasting support for the military as itself the hallmark of citizenship and masculinity. On that basis, supporting the troops is not really about the military at all, or even the legitimacy of war, but rather society’s maintenance of appropriate civil-military relations. Support is also increasingly transnationalized, as a seemingly apolitical vector for racialized, colonial hierarchy. Military support is the new military service—with a number of negative implications for democratic dissent. War opposition is sharply constrained, as martial obligation makes it possible to contest one war, on behalf of the troops, but not the practice of war itself. Overall, the book demonstrates the importance of gendered solidarism and loyalty, rather than solely dynamics of enmity and antagonism, in producing political community, the transnational liberal order and liberal wars.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.