Militarisation as Diffusion: The Politics of Gender, Space and the Everyday

Citation:

Henry, Marsha, and Katherine Natanel. 2016. “Militarisation as Diffusion: The Politics of Gender, Space and the Everyday.” Gender, Place & Culture 23 (6): 850–56. doi:10.1080/0966369X.2016.1164994.

Authors: Marsha Henry, Katherine Natanel

Abstract:

Drawing together the work of five feminist scholars whose research spans diverse sociopolitical contexts, this themed section questions militarisation as a fixed condition. Using feminist methodologies to explore the spatialised networks and social mechanisms through which militarisation is sustained and resisted, ‘gendering’ militarisation reveals a complex politics of diffusion at work in a range of everyday power relations. However, diffusion acts not as a unidirectional movement across a border, but as the very contingency which makes militarisation – and transformation – possible. Through connecting the empirical and theoretical work on militarisation with feminist geographies, the authors in this collection highlight the influence of military thinking and institutions, not as static structures, but instead as productive sites.

Keywords: militarisation, diffusion, Gender, race, everyday life, feminist geopolitics, critical military studies

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization

Year: 2016