Civil–Military Entanglements

Anthropological Perspectives

Birgitte Refslund Sørensen, Eyal Ben-Ari, Birgitte Refslund Sørensen, Eyal Ben-Ari

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781789201963
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Violence in Society
• Index: Social Sciences

Military-civilian encounters are multiple and diverse in our times. Contributors to this volume demonstrate how military and civilian domains are constituted through entanglements undermining the classic civil-military binary and manifest themselves in unexpected places and manners. Moreover, the essays trace out the ripples, reverberations and resonations of civil-military entanglements in areas not usually associated with such ties, but which are nevertheless real and significant for an understanding of the roles war, violence and the military play in shaping contemporary societies and the everyday life of its citizens.

Chapter 1

The Invisible Uniform

Civil–Military Entanglements in the Everyday Life of Danish Soldiers’ Families

Birgitte Refslund Sørensen and Maj Hedegaard Heiselberg

This chapter aims to make a contribution to thinking about civil– military relations by exploring how the international deployment of Danish soldiers turns their families’ everyday lives into a space in which civil–military relations are lived, reflected upon, negotiated, and given shape. To many scholars of civil–military relations, this may appear an odd place to initiate an exploration of civil–military relations, but in this chapter we argue that the everyday lives of soldiers’ families offer a unique insight into how the contemporary civilian and military worlds are related, indeed entangled and embedded in each other. Families’ experiences show how the international deployment of soldiers generates multiple practical, material, and emotional ripples in everyday social worlds that are physically remote from government offices, military headquarters, barracks, battlefields, and army camps. But rather than simply seeing soldiers’ spouses and families as victims of deployment, or indeed of militarization, we contend that their everyday lives possess a critical potential that subtly contributes to defining contemporary civil–military relations.

Given recent transformations in the global security landscape, which call for new kinds of military operations, many Western nations have embarked on a reorganization of their armed forces, typically moving away from conscript armies toward smaller and more flexible professional armies (Joenniemi 2006; Mannitz 2012). The professionalization of armies and the reshaping of soldiering has made the complex figure of “the modern soldier” a favorite object of interest in studies of civil–military relations and military studies more generally (Dempsey 2010; Feaver and Kohn 2001; King 2010; Mannitz 2012). The changes mentioned above, however, not only affect soldiers’ recruitment, training, and operations, but also reverberate strongly in the civilian world, as political and military authorities alike become increasingly keen on obtaining civilian support for the troops and their missions (Gee 2014). Consequently, the home civilian world emerges as a critical terrain in which to engage for both political and military leaderships.

Efforts to increase support of the military among civilian populations are many, as documented by the burgeoning anthropological literature on “militarization” (Ben-Ari 2004; Enloe 2000; Frühstück 2007; Gonzalez 2010; Lutz 2001). In its most overt form, militarization works through propaganda and recruitment materials, public military shows and parades, or through the configuration of landscapes with war memorials commemorating and celebrating soldiers’ sacrifices (Sørensen 2017). However, as Cynthia Enloe (2000: 2) remarks, “militarization is never simply about joining a military. It is a far more subtle process.” Several studies, for instance, have demonstrated how the entertainment, fashion, and toy industries, as well as the worlds of the arts and museums, are often implicated in processes of militarization (Dean 2009; Der Derian 2009; Gonzalez 2010). Militarization not only shapes the public space and popular culture, it “creeps into ordinary daily routines; [and] threads its way amid memos, laundry, lovemaking, and the clinked of frosted beer glasses,” as Enloe (2000: 3) phrases it. Ethnographic studies of militarization make a useful contribution to the field of civil–military relations by showing how they are never reducible to institutional arrangements alone, but are always also about the everyday lives of ordinary people. While we will probably all discover traces of militarization in our everyday lives if we scrutinize our kitchens, children’s playrooms, wardrobes, and bookshelves, the families of soldiers, we argue, are particularly entangled in webs of militarization (Åhäll 2016; Heiselberg 2017; Hyde 2016; Sørensen 2013). As one spouse remarked to anthropologist Kenneth MacLeish (2013: 177), “Military spouses bridge the gap between civilians and the military.” Although hinting at militarization as a possible consequence of civil–military entanglements, recent sociological studies of military families tend to focus instead on the conflicting demands of the military and the family respectively. Often the family and the military are portrayed as equally “greedy” institutions, both reliant on time and devotion, and resulting in so-called work-family or family-work conflicts (De Angelis and Segal 2015; Moelker et al. 2015).

The militarization and greedy institution perspectives help us see how the civilian world becomes implicated in security policies and military worlds, but unfortunately these perspectives pay scant attention to how ordinary civilians, some of whom are intimately connected to military personnel, are not only acted upon by militarization, but also act upon it. By approaching the encounters of soldiers’ families with the military from the perspective of the everyday, we wish to draw attention to the various ways in which military spouses act upon militarization and greedy demands, and reject, negotiate, or adapt to the presence of the military in their private lives, thus co-producing particular manifestations of civil–military entanglements (see also Heiselberg 2017; Sørensen 2013).

Drawing on Hodder’s (2012: 91) understanding of entanglement, we wish to demonstrate how the influence of the military on the daily lives, personal relationships, and private spaces of soldiers’ families, far from being uncritically adopted, are always mediated, negotiated, and interpreted in specific social circumstances. In other words, whereas militarization is usually portrayed as a one-way process, entanglement captures the dialectical and transformative relationship of civil–military relations. Civilian reactions to war and militarism may be vociferous, as when people take to the streets protesting with banners (Inoue 2007; Schober 2016), but as we shall show in this chapter, like militarization itself, they may also be subtly embedded in the conduct of everyday life.

The concept of everyday life is commonly perceived in terms of routines, repetition, and reproduction, which give it an air of mundaneness and taken-for-grantedness (Ehn and Löfgren 2009; Gullestad 1991). However, as numerous researchers have shown, the conduct of everyday life is shaped by improvisation (Amit 2015) and creativity (Löfgren 2001), also being interspersed with signifying “extraordinary experiences” (Shokeid 1992). And, as feminist scholars have pointed out, it is inherently political and may even constitute an arena of conflicts and struggles, a potential site of “resistance and subversion” (Felski 2012: 290). Moreover, as Mike Featherstone (2012: 237) argues, critique anchored in everyday life points at its counterpositioned “heroic life,” with its emphasis on the (masculine) exceptional, adventure, courage, and sacrifice. This observation reverberates with our accounts of Danish soldiers’ families, where one member is cast as a “hero” and the others are simply derivative “kindred” (pårørende). However, as we shall show, families’ responses to “heroic life” as a dominant contrast and parameter of their everyday lives are not consistent, but waver between positions of all-out support, being reluctant and doubtful, or rejecting and resisting it. In that sense, civil–military relations are always uniquely created within each family setting, constantly being negotiated, transformed, and entangled in new ways.

Civil–military relations and everyday life are both inherently gendered fields, as reflected in approaches to soldiers and their families.¹ In the academic and policy fields alike, soldiers’ families are commonly referred to as “military families,” “military spouses,” or “military wives,” all of which stress their belonging and subjection to the military. While this may in some cases indeed be an apt analytical rendering, we opt for “soldiers’ families” and “soldiers’ spouses” as descriptive categories that highlight our interlocutors’ conjugal bond with soldiers, but do not assume in advance any particular relationship to the military. Our female interlocutors were very conscious that labels matter, and many actively engaged in a politics of categorization in order to maintain some control over their own lives. When the soldiers were deployed, their female family members were exposed to particular social and military imaginaries of their gendered roles and social identities, which were often at odds with the women’s self-understandings and their notions of modern family life and parenthood. Thus, as Catherine Lutz (2001) has argued, militarization is always gendered, but everyday negotiations of civil–military relations reveal new grounds for exploring how gendered social identities are shaped and reconsidered.

Our account of how the families of Danish soldiers with a deployment history are affected by and respond to this experience draws on semi-structured interviews with fourteen soldiers, twenty-four spouses, one sister, and two mothers of soldiers who went on tours of duty to Iraq or Afghanistan between 2005 and 2015.² Everyday time spent with soldiers’ families in their homes constitutes another important source of ethnographic data, as do observations and casual conversations with soldiers’ family members at public events in honor and recognition of the veterans, and family events hosted by the military before, during, and after deployment. Having outlined our analytical approach to civil–military entanglements and the fieldwork on which this analysis builds, we will briefly introduce the political context before entering into the everyday lives of some Danish soldiers’ families to follow how they reflectively engage with things military in their everyday lives.

Contemporary civil–military relations in Denmark are a product of the political switch from a long-established pacifist approach to foreign policy to the so-called “activist foreign policy” of the 1990s, when Danish troops became a new instrument in the foreign-policy toolbox (Kristensen 2013). Since then, the government has deployed Danish armed forces on UN and NATO missions to the Balkans, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the Gulf of Aden, Mali, and Syria, some of which were destined to engage the troops in combat with insurgency groups.³ The inevitable risk of casualties and severe injuries did not affect popular support, nor did it discourage young men and women from joining the armed forces and signing up for deployment (Pendersen 2017).

Civil–military relations and entanglements are not only shaped by security policies, they are also marked by the particular spatial organization of the military, which influences the everyday social environment of soldiers’ families. The literature on civil–military relations, and especially on the militarization of soldiers’ families, has long been dominated by the experience of the United States, where many families live in communities established at and around military bases (Enloe 2000; Lutz 2001; MacLeish 2013). In many other countries, including Denmark, the military does not provide housing for families at army bases, and it is important to examine to what extent their lives are influenced by the military, and how.

Taking our point of departure in Felski’s (2012: 294) important reminder that everyday life is lived in many different spaces, we begin our analysis with a discussion of soldiers’ families’ first encounters with the Danish military as an institution. In the following section, we then direct our analytical gaze at the social environment of the soldiers’ families, demonstrating how public opinion about warfare in general and deployment in particular affects their social standing and identity. We then zoom in on the private sphere, looking at how “things military” and “things civilian” are negotiated and manifest themselves in the routines and spatial organization of the home. In all three sections, we demonstrate how deployment necessitates soldiers’ spouses reflecting on and negotiating the social meanings of family, parenthood, and their identity as women, but most importantly, the military’s part in these. We conclude with some reflections on civil–military entanglements as an analytical approach to examining the presence of the military in the everyday lives of soldiers’ families.

Lingo and Discipline: Encountering the Military

Just as many parents recall how their child’s decision to join the armed forces and go to war had surprised or even shocked them, many wives tell how the first tour came about unexpectedly, although most had been well aware of the obligations of a military career when they got married.⁴ The announcement of an upcoming tour of duty, we argue, constitutes a “disjuncture” (Amit 2015) or a “decision-event” (Humphrey 2008) for the family, which ruptures and challenges established ways, demands numerous adjustments, and opens up a space for change. The first deployment sends most soldiers’ families on a journey into a largely unknown military world with a distinct culture, which, in the case of repeated deployments, may become increasingly familiar and normalized, while the challenges of how to manage everyday family life with one parent absent usually remain.

The participation of the Danish armed forces in international operations has required closer and more frequent contact with the soldiers’ families, whose support is deemed both important and necessary. This is primarily facilitated through family gatherings and network groups and the appointment of family liaison officers, who keep families informed about the mission and offer them support. The regular family meetings at garrisons constitute an important arena for the initial military socialization of soldiers’ families. Here they are introduced to basic military terminology and receive instructions regarding their new social roles as soldiers’ relatives.

Lingo

A clash between civil and military and a subtle sign of the growing militarization of families are revealed already in the formal letter of invitation to a family event that one of our interlocutors receives. It is addressed to pårørende (kindreds) and invites them to a “light lunch” and a “chat in network groups” at the garrison. Colloquialisms are scarce in the letter, which is dominated by military lingo like “B Coy,” “PNINF,” “ISAF,” “KC,” and “KTO/GHR,” which all envelop and socialize the families into the military world of specialized functions, weaponry, missions, regiments, ranks, etc. At the meeting, the list of baffling abbreviations and terms continues to grow, as army commanders and family liaison officers add “MOB,” “FOB,” “Hesco,” “PMV,” “IED,” “minimize,” “leave,” “A&R,” and many more. The speakers aspire to provide the families with basic insights into the troops’ living conditions, tasks, and schedules, but judging from the audience’s mutterings, much of the information is incomprehensible to them.

Soldiers’ families respond and adapt to the military world and new lingo differently. Pernille, whose son is on his first tour to Afghanistan, enthusiastically embraces the changes: “I try to learn their [the soldiers’] language. I read everything I can get my hands on related to the mission in Afghanistan; I learn the names, and I know who is who, what groups and sections there are, where they are, and how they are placed in relation to the Helmand River.” Knowing the basic military lingo, she explains, helps her to interpret the scarce information the military releases about the mission and to communicate with her son on his own terms. Pernille smilingly adds, “Now I have a share in the armed forces,” as she elaborates on how she feels part of the whole effort. One could argue that Pernille is thus attempting to elevate her own life by integrating it into a narrative of “heroic life” (Featherstone 2012). Some relatives are far more reluctant about letting the military world and perspective enter their everyday lives and insist on a “civilian” conceptualization of the situation. After a meeting at the garrison, one spouse angrily remarks that, “They keep talking to us about “our soldiers.” To me and to us [the family] he’s not a soldier, he’s just Martin—my husband and the girls’ father. I really hate it when they say that.” Other women resist subjection to military culture by refusing to learn and adopt military terms or abbreviations, not paying attention when their husbands talk about their work in technical terms, and mocking military expressions and abbreviations.⁵

The military lingo plays a crucial role in the formation of relationships between the military and the soldiers’ relatives. The military institution demonstrates its dominance by assuming that soldiers’ families know or will gradually learn the military language. And it appreciates knowledge of the military lingo as a sign of commitment, warily viewing the lack thereof as a sign of insufficient support. So does the individual soldier sometimes. Although Sandra takes a keen interest in her husband’s military career, she finds it difficult to remember what her husband refers to as simple abbreviations. “You have heard that word a hundred times. How can you stil...