Forces for Good? British Military Masculinities on Peace Support Operations
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Forces for Good? British Military Masculinities on Peace Support Operations Claire Duncanson PhD – The University of Edinburgh – 2007 Contents Contents ii Acknowledgements vii Abstract ix Declaration xi Part 1: Theoretical and Methodological Background 1 Chapter One: Introduction 1 The British Army as a Force for Good 3 The Importance of Exploring Military Masculinities 5 Structure of Text 8 Chapter Two: Gender, International Relations, War and Peace 12 I: Masculinity, War and Militarism 13 The Manliness of War 13 Implications for the Other: Femininity 16 Women in the Military 18 II: Anti-militarist Feminist Perspectives on Peacekeeping 20 Soldiers as Peacekeepers: an Inherent Contradiction? 20 Peacekeeping as the New Imperialism 23 Peacekeeping and Gender Mainstreaming 24 III: Masculinity in IR Theories 29 The Gender Blindness of Realism 29 Challenges to Realism in IR 32 Conclusion 35 Chapter Three: British Military Masculinities – “Physically Fit, Mentally Brave, Emotionally Hard.” 36 ii I: The Construction of British Military Masculinities 37 Does the Military Make a Man of You? 37 Multiple, Dynamic and Contradictory Masculinities 40 II: Gender Relations and Hegemonic Masculinity in the British Army 45 Making Sense of Multiple and Contradictory Masculinities 45 Power 48 Division of Labour 50 Emotional Relations 52 Symbolism 54 The “Combat Model” as Hegemonic Masculinity 55 Conclusion 55 Chapter Four: Exploring Military Masculinities – A Feminist Discourse Analysis 57 I: Theoretical Approach: Feminist Social Constructivism 57 The Social Construction of Gender 58 The Social Construction of Security 60 II: Methodology: Discourse Theory 61 Discourse and the Material World 63 Linking and Differentiation 64 Fluidity of Discourse 66 Intersections of Gender with Race, Class and Sexuality 67 Interpretative Strategy 67 Feminisation and Masculinisation 70 III: Applying the Interpretative Strategy: Method and Sources 72 Policy and Doctrine 73 Recruitment Material 75 Training Literature 76 Autobiographical Accounts of Soldiers on PSOs 77 Reflection in the Media 79 Fieldtrips to Training for PSOs 79 Issues of Reliability, Validity and Generalizability 80 Conclusion 82 iii Part Two: The Case of the British Army 84 Chapter Five: The British Army as a “Force for Good” 84 I: The UK and the Emergence of Military Humanitarianism 85 From the End of the Cold War to Peacekeeping in the Balkans 86 An Ethical Foreign Policy 90 The Impact of 9/11 93 II: Peace Support Operations and Conflict Resolution 95 Conclusion 103 Chapter Six: Competing Discourses – Peacekeeping as Masculine, Peacekeeping as Emasculating 105 I: Peacekeeping as Masculine 106 JWP 3-50: The Military Contribution to Peace Support Operations 106 Recruitment and Training Material: “Be the Best” 110 Informal Sources of British Army Doctrine: Autobiographies 117 Training Fieldtrips 127 II: Peacekeeper Masculinity as Emasculating 129 JWP 3-50 Revisited: Revealing the Tensions 129 Recruitment and Training Material Revisited: Reinforcing Combat Masculinity 130 Autobiographies Revisited: the Tensions Intensify 132 Fieldtrips: Resisting the Label of a “Force for Good” 138 Conclusion 139 Chapter Seven: Peacekeeper Masculinity and the Other 141 I: Relations with Women 142 Women Soldiers 142 Women on the Home Front 146 Civilian Women on PSOs 147 II: Relations with Men 156 Hypermasculine Local Warlords 156 Soldiers of Other Nationalities 163 iv Aid Workers, Journalists and Politicians 164 Male Civilians 166 Conclusion 167 Part Three: Analysis and Conclusions 169 Chapter Eight: Implications of Peacekeeper Masculinity – the Regendered Soldier? 169 I: Peacekeeper Masculinity 169 II: Peacekeeper Masculinity and the New Imperialism 171 III: Taking Peacekeeper Masculinity Seriously 181 Peacekeeper Masculinity and the Challenge to Gendered Dichotomies 181 Peacekeeper Masculinity and the Possibility of Non-radical Others 184 Regendered Soldiers and Regendered Militaries 186 Conclusion 191 Chapter Nine: Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity – Engendering Change 192 I: Hegemonic Masculinity in the British Army 193 II: Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity 195 Hooper’s Manly States 195 Niva’s Tough but Tender Masculinities 196 Demetriou’s Hybrid Masculinity 199 Connell and “Positive Hegemonic Masculinity” 201 Dismantling Hegemonic Masculinity 204 III: Peacekeeper Masculinity’s Challenge 206 Peacekeeper Masculinity as Hegemonic Masculinity 206 “Business as Usual” or Radical Challenge? 209 Regendered Militaries: Hegemonic Masculinity Dismantled 211 Conclusion 213 Chapter Ten: Conclusion – Regendered Militaries and (Gender) Justice, Peace and Security 215 v I: The anti-militarist Feminist Challenge 215 II: Constructions of Masculinity in the British Army on PSOs 217 III: What Lessons can be Drawn from Peacekeeper Masculinity? Theoretical and Methodological Contributions 220 IV: Regendered Militaries and the Importance of Utopian Thinking 224 Bibliography 226 vi Acknowledgements Firstly, and most importantly, I would like to thank my main supervisor, Fiona Mackay, who has been a constant source of invaluable advice, support and encouragement, both emotional and intellectual, throughout the writing of this thesis. My second supervisor, Roland Dannreuther, has also been fantastic, and it has been particularly useful to have a supervisor not familiar with gender to push me to clarify the slippery concepts associated with the study of gender. I owe the ESRC a great deal of gratitude for their financial support, and for allowing me to transfer from part-time to full-time mid way through the project. I also wish to thank all those within the British Army and Ministry of Defence who helped facilitate this research, particularly Major Simon Thomsett who arranged the field trips to training sites. The School of Social and Political Studies at the University of Edinburgh has provided a rich research environment within which to study. In particular the Gender and Politics Research Group, with its fortnightly reading group, has been a great source of support and encouragement and I would like to thank all the participants for many stimulating conversations over coffee and cake – especially Fiona Mackay, Kate Bilton, Elena Pollot- Thompson, Meryl Kenny, Amanda Whitman and Tom Moore. Other friends within the school have also provided support and intellectual debate – thanks in particular to Andrea Birdsall, Caroline Bouchard, and Ben Hawkins, who have all read bits and pieces of this work and provided extremely useful comments. I would also like to thank all those who gave comments at various conferences at which I aired earlier versions of some of the ideas in this thesis. Some offered written comments which were hugely helpful, including Paul Higate at Bristol, and, in particular, Catherine Eschle at Strathclyde, who has become a great intellectual inspiration and friend over the last couple of years. Previous renditions of some of the arguments appear in Duncanson, C, “Forces for Good? Narratives of Military Masculinity in Peacekeeping Operations,” International Feminist Journal of Politics (IFJP), (Forthcoming, 2007); and Duncanson, C, vii “Forces for Good: Changing Military Masculinities in the UK Armed Forces,” New Voices, New Perspectives, United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), March 2006. In preparing these articles, I received helpful comments from anonymous reviewers for the IFJP, from the editor Sandra Whitworth, and, at INSTRAW, Kristin Valasek, and would like to acknowledge their support here. My friends from out-with the university, my family, and my partner Alan, have also been fantastic, demonstrating endless patience with the ever-shifting final deadline. Special mention must go to Alan, Lyndsay Mann and Sophie Mulphin, who read earlier drafts of the first three chapters and offered invaluable comments. Thanks are also due to Alan and to Georgie Young for technical support with the diagrams and images. Finally, thanks must go to the due-any-day-now baby, for finally providing a deadline which could not be extended! viii Abstract This thesis is situated at the intersection of Feminist International Relations, Critical Security Studies and Gender Studies. It takes as its starting point – and offers a challenge to – the feminist contention that soldiers cannot be peacekeepers due to hegemonic constructions of military masculinity associated with the skills and practices of combat. It problematises this assumption by investigating whether involvement in the practices of conflict resolution on Peace Support Operations (PSOs) influences the construction of military masculinities. The thesis also questions the rather monolithic accounts of masculinity which are found in feminist arguments that peacekeeping soldiers reinforce neo-imperial oppression, and argues that such critiques neglect the potentially more progressive aspects of employing soldiers as peacekeepers. Using the British Army as a case study to explore these conceptual issues, the thesis utilises a novel methodological approach derived from R W Connell’s framework of gender relations and social constructivist discourse theory. It analyses both official and unofficial sources of British Army discourse on PSOs, including military doctrine, recruitment material and autobiography, and finds evidence to suggest that ‘peacekeeper masculinity’ offers a challenge, albeit incomplete, to the hegemonic masculinity associated with combat. The thesis argues that, despite the limited nature of this challenge,