Is Britain a force for good? Investigating British citizens’ narrative understanding of war

Abstract

It is commonly assumed in the foreign policy literature that narratives are uniquely persuasive and thus integral to obtaining public support for war. Yet empirical research on 'strategic narrative' is often vague on both the concept of narrative and how it persuades.Moreover, the stories publics use to interpret war are rarely examined. This paper offers a novel approach to studying 'from the ground up' the war stories of individual British citizens.It examines public interpretations of war through emplotment: the way people select and link events to create a coherent story. Examining the wars people include and those they silence, it illustrates how a diverse range of citizens morally evaluates Britain's military role, be it as a Force for Good, a Force for Ill or a country Learning from its Mistakes. In doing so the paper offers an alternative methodological approach to studying how individual citizens understand war.

Destruct, direct and suppress: Sputnik narratives on the Nordic countries

“…Still, we lack studies investigating effects specifically of strategic narratives (see however Schmitt 2018; Crilley and Chatterje-Doody 2020). Future scholarly works need to scrutinise effects of strategic narration, for example studying how narrative emplotment affects interpretation (Colley 2017) and how the reader gets absorbed into a story through imagery, affect and attentional focus through the narrative mechanism of transportation (Green and Brock 2000).…”

Understanding EU crisis diplomacy in the European neighbourhood: strategic narratives and perceptions of the EU in Ukraine, Israel and Palestine

“…We also see a focus on the role of narrative in military conflict (Hoskins and O'Loughlin 2010, Betz 2015, Hellman and Wagnsson 2015, Coticchia and De Simone 2016 and how narratives projected by states shape responses to crises (Hertner andMiskimmon 2015, O'Loughlin 2017). We have also seen an emerging body of studies examining how citizens respond to the strategic narratives of states (Colley 2017, Szostek 2017, 2018. This body of strategic narrative studies connects with scholars working on EU external perceptions research which has made an important contribution to how we understand the reception of narratives in third countries (see, for example, Holland and Chaban 2011, also Chaban and Holland 2008.…”

Misrecognising the victim of state violence: denial, ‘deep’ imperialism and defending ‘our boys’

“…While Britain has a long history of military intervention overseas [18,21,22,24,70,84], this article has chosen to primarily focus on Iraq and the North of Ireland. Geopolitical differences notwithstanding, these sites have been chosen because both have been at the centre of recent claims of a 'witch hunt' against British Army veterans, both have been subject to a number of official inquiries relating to British Army conduct and both have seen recent legal action relating to British Army activity -most notably the mistreatment of detainees.…”

“…The injection of 'deep imperialism' into discourses of denial has allowed identity politics to frame how the British 'imagined community' [4,10] views its military. The British 'imagined community' have been conditioned through such a discourse to view the British Army as a transhistorical force for good [18], reflecting how official discourse shapes narrative identities subscribed to by the public [83]. Granted, one may question to what degree a hegemonic discourse successfully embeds itself into the public mind.…”

“…However, with most people in the UK relying on media, cultural and popular portrayals of, rather than personal interaction with or connection to, 'our boys', their understanding is shaped by what these portrayals want to show and what they want to hide [101]. Unsurprisingly, then, a significant body of research drawing on public views of 'our boys' has shown that they are sufficiently influenced by official discourse [18,24,42]. When confronted with allegations of wrongdoing by 'the bravest of the brave' official discourse encourages the British public to adopt what is essentially a moral myopia -a form of 'deep imperialism' framed identity politics that fails to look at the British Army through anything other than a favourable lens of nearsightedness.…”