Chameleon Masculinity Lauren Greenwood FINAL.pdf (705.38 kB)
Chameleon masculinity: developing the British ‘population-centred’ soldier
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-21, 06:01 authored by Lauren GreenwoodIn this article I develop what I term chameleon masculinity as a specific form of gendered adaptation of military agency opened up by the post-9/11 shift towards ‘population-centred’ counterinsurgency and stabilisation. A gendered analysis of this carefully cultivated form of military agency is central to revealing some of the concealed embodied dynamics that challenge the hegemony of the traditional combat soldier, and in practice enables this form of war. Drawing on 18 months of anthropological fieldwork, for the most part alongside the UK’s Military Stabilisation Support Group, this research incorporates my auto-ethnography as an officer in the Royal Naval Reserves. Rather than focusing at the level of policy, strategy, and doctrine, I examine how the specialized and masculinized agency of ‘the chameleon’ translates tactically into the body of the British military stabilisation operative, showing how this is developed though intensive pre-deployment training in the UK, and embodied and practised through operational deployment in Afghanistan. This reveals the specific agency of chameleon masculinity and how its potential for inherent violence becomes deceptively ‘hidden in plain sight’.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
Critical Military StudiesISSN
2333-7486Publisher
Taylor & FrancisExternal DOI
Issue
1-2Volume
2Page range
84-102Department affiliated with
- Anthropology Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2016-07-04First Open Access (FOA) Date
2017-12-22First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2016-09-16Usage metrics
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