Forces for Good?: Military Masculinities and Peacebuilding in Afghanistan and Iraq (Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies)

This book utilises the growing phenomenon of British soldier narratives from Iraq and Afghanistan to explore how British soldiers make sense of their role on these complex, multi-dimensional operations. It aims to intervene in the debates within critical feminist scholarship over whether soldiers can ever be agents of peace. Forces for Good? explores British soldier 'herographies' to identify constructions of gender, race, class and nation and their consequences on complex, multi-dimensional operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This book aims to intervene in the debates within critical feminist scholarship over whether soldiers can ever be agents of peace. Many feminist analyses of military intervention point to the way in which interventions are legitimated by gendered narratives where representatives of civilization are tasked with addressing violent conflict in troubled lands, a story which distracts from the root causes of the violence and enables the furthering of a neoliberal agenda. This book advances this critique by adding the important but hitherto neglected case of the British Army, and challenges its determinism, which Duncanson argues to be normatively, empirically and theoretically problematic. Exploring the impact of identity and gender constructions on the prospects for successful peacebuilding, this book will appeal to a range of scholars in politics, international relations, peace studies, gender and women's studies, sociology and anthropology "Forces for Good? explores British soldier 'herographies' to identify constructions of gender, race, class and nation and their consequences on complex, multi-dimensional operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This book aims to intervene in the debates within critical feminist scholarship over whether soldiers can ever be agents of peace. Many feminist analyses of military intervention point to the way in which interventions are legitimated by gendered narratives where representatives of civilization are tasked with addressing violent conflict in troubled lands, a story which distracts from the root causes of the violence and enables the furthering of a neoliberal agenda. This book advances this critique by adding the important but hitherto neglected case of the British Army, and challenges its determinism, which Duncanson argues to be normatively, empirically and theoretically problematic. Exploring the impact of identity and gender constructions on the prospects for successful peacebuilding, this book will appeal to a range of scholars in politics, international relations, peace studies, gender and women's studies, sociology and anthropology."-- Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Introduction....Pages 1-17 Can Soldiers Ever Be Used to Achieve Peace? Feminists Debate Military Intervention....Pages 18-51 What Can We Learn from Soldiers’ Narratives? Methodologies and Methods....Pages 52-71 British Soldier Identities and the War-Fighting Ethos....Pages 72-102 British Soldiers Doing and Undoing Empire in Iraq and Afghanistan....Pages 103-133 Regendered Soldiers and the Transformation of Hegemonic Masculinity....Pages 134-160 Conclusion....Pages 161-164 Back Matter....Pages 165-193