University of Sussex
Browse
Chameleon Masculinity Lauren Greenwood FINAL.pdf (705.38 kB)

Chameleon masculinity: developing the British ‘population-centred’ soldier

Download (705.38 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-21, 06:01 authored by Lauren Greenwood
In 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 Studies

ISSN

2333-7486

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Issue

1-2

Volume

2

Page range

84-102

Department affiliated with

  • Anthropology Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2016-07-04

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2017-12-22

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-09-16

Usage metrics

    University of Sussex (Publications)

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC