Awkward Moments in the Anthropology of the Military and the (Im)possibility of Critique
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Standard
Awkward Moments in the Anthropology of the Military and the (Im)possibility of Critique. / Sørensen, Birgitte Refslund; Weisdorf, Matti.
In: Ethnos - Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 86, No. 4: Studying the Military, 2021, p. 632-653.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Author
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - Awkward Moments in the Anthropology of the Military and the (Im)possibility of Critique
AU - Sørensen, Birgitte Refslund
AU - Weisdorf, Matti
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - One outcome of Denmark’s recent military engagements in international conflicts is an emerging social category of veterans, exceeding 40,000 individuals. While the contemporary wars are ‘distant wars’, the veterans bring war home in various guises. For that reason, veterans have become a major political, professional, and scholarly matter of concern. This article explores co-existing framings of ‘the veteran’ with point of departure in the authors’ engagements with veterans, professionals, and fellow academics. We focus on ‘awkward fieldwork moments’, when we felt caught between conflicting normative views of the veteran that each demanded different appropriate reactions, and scrutinise the (im)possibilities of critique that these situations present. By way of conclusion, we propose a pluralising attitude to this particularly charged field of inquiry; one, which neither condemns nor lauds ipsofacto, but, ra-ther, dissects the discursive limits imposed on our reasoning andexperiment with the possibility of braving them through empathetic engagement.
AB - One outcome of Denmark’s recent military engagements in international conflicts is an emerging social category of veterans, exceeding 40,000 individuals. While the contemporary wars are ‘distant wars’, the veterans bring war home in various guises. For that reason, veterans have become a major political, professional, and scholarly matter of concern. This article explores co-existing framings of ‘the veteran’ with point of departure in the authors’ engagements with veterans, professionals, and fellow academics. We focus on ‘awkward fieldwork moments’, when we felt caught between conflicting normative views of the veteran that each demanded different appropriate reactions, and scrutinise the (im)possibilities of critique that these situations present. By way of conclusion, we propose a pluralising attitude to this particularly charged field of inquiry; one, which neither condemns nor lauds ipsofacto, but, ra-ther, dissects the discursive limits imposed on our reasoning andexperiment with the possibility of braving them through empathetic engagement.
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - Veterans
KW - critique
KW - normativity
KW - Denmark
KW - awkward moments
U2 - 10.1080/00141844.2019.1688373
DO - 10.1080/00141844.2019.1688373
M3 - Journal article
VL - 86
SP - 632
EP - 653
JO - Ethnos
JF - Ethnos
SN - 0014-1844
IS - 4: Studying the Military
ER -
ID: 236615021