Regimented Life
An Ethnography of Army Wives
- Based on unprecedented ethnographic access to a British Army regiment as a unit of social and cultural belonging
- Conducted from the perspective of those occupying a complex but frequently over-simplified position in relation to military cohesion, war and militarisation
- Contributes a critical and nuanced empirical discussion to debates on militarisation as a conceptual framework for analysis of the everyday operation of military power
- Provides a feminist analysis of gendered agency and its ambiguities
- Critically engages with the reliance of military–institutional power on heteronormativity simultaneously embedded in hierarchies of rank, class and race
Based on unprecedented ethnographic access to a regimental community in Germany during a period of deployment to Afghanistan, this analysis of the ambiguities of gendered agency focuses not on the front-line experience of soldiers, but on that of the wives ‘left behind’. Alexandra Hyde explores the mobile and contradictory position of civilian women as they navigate British Army culture and its reified production of social belonging. The book considers wives’ exposure to – and implication in – processes of militarisation and, ultimately, war and state-sanctioned violence as they ‘live with’ rather than ‘serve in’ the military.
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Follow the Cake Stall
Interstitial I: Bicycle
Chapter One: Military Mobilities
Interstitial II: Dining Out
Chapter Two: Ranking Difference and Distinction
Interstitial III: ‘Female in Shower’ and Other Signs
Chapter Three: Regimented Life
Interstitial IV: Shock-the-Civilian Stories
Conclusion: The "Cotton Wool Effect"?
Bibliography
