‘My Pink Uniform Shows I am One of Them’: Socio-Cultural Dimensions of German Peacekeeping Missions

Paint it black: Colours and the social meaning of the battlefield

“…For fellow soldiers, too, the state of dress can signal expectations and capabilities. For example, during World War II (Forsyth, 2014a), and in contemporary Afghanistan (Tomforde, 2009), worn and dirty uniforms signal the knowledge and norms of combat veterans, whereas clean and new uniforms are a sign of being a raw recruit, or a reinforcement with less knowledge (and more likelihood of becoming a quick casualty). The state, wear and colour-tone of combat dress can serve as a distinction even in a uniform unit (and Special Forces modify their kit, partially for the same reason).…”

Anthropology of the Military

“…This situation started to change at the end of the Cold War and the major transformations this period brought about. New kinds of studies began to emerge: Bickford's (2011) ethnography of the effects of Germany's reunification on the lives and identities of former East German officers, Ben-Ari's (1998) analysis of an Israeli infantry battalion, Moelker and Schut's "kinetic ethnography" of Dutch veteran bikers, Sztankai's action anthropological study of the Hungarian Defence Forces (2014), and Tomforde's (2009) research on changing German military cultures in peace operations. Especially with the new kind of warfare, combining older and newer forms, and variously termed "asymmetrical wars," "hybrid wars," "postmodern wars," or simply the "New Wars," anthropological studies of the armed forces developed rapidly.…”

“…Anthropologists have also penned full-fledge ethnographies of units (Ben-Ari 1998;Danielsen 2015;Irwin 2002;Simons 1997; and military bases (Hawkins 2001). Yet other analyses have focused on military cultures, such as those of the U.S. Marines (Holmes-Eber 2014) and the U.S. National Guard (Vest 2013), the British military (Kirke 2009), the Dutch forces (Sion 2004), and the German military in peace operations (Tomforde 2009). An important addition, especially given the methodological difficulties mentioned above, are studies of the actual experience of armed conflict (Bar and Ben-Ari 2005;Ben-Ari et al 2010;Guber 2016;Pedersen 2019;Tomforde 2016) and of military occupation (Ben-Ari 1989;Ben-Ari 1998;Grassiani 2013).…”