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

ABSTRACT

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’.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• masculinity
• British military
• counterinsurgency
• stabilisation
• anthropology
• embodiment
• agency
• auto-ethnography

Acknowledgements

Thanks firstly must go to the two anonymous reviewers, for their insightful comments on a previous draft. Special appreciation and gratitude to Synne Dyvik, Susan Greenwood, Helen Cornish, Brian Bates, and Victoria Basham for their very helpful advice, and discussions about chameleons. I would also like to thank the participants of the ‘Embodying Militarism’ workshop, and particularly Geoffrey Samuel and Santi Rozario. Finally, I would especially like to thank those who participated in my research, spending many hours discussing the intricacies of soldering, counterinsurgency, and stabilisation with me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In the UK, ‘stabilisation’ is a cross-governmental set of practices and processes that have primarily drawn together the UK’s departments of defence, diplomacy and development. It is based on the ‘promotion of peaceful political settlement to produce a legitimate indigenous government’ with the so-called aim of ‘establishing peace and security in countries affected by conflict and instability’ (JDN 6/10 2010, 1–1).

2. Importantly, my research was an anthropology ‘of’, rather than ‘for’, the military; it was independently funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council.

3. Scientific studies have revealed that chameleons, rather than changing colour to match their surroundings, instead have a ‘remarkable ability to exhibit complex and rapid colour changes during social interactions such as male contests or courtship’ (Teyssier et al. 2015).

4. ‘Agency’ defined in this case as the ability ‘to be the source and originator of acts’ (Rapport and Overing 2000, 1).

5. Since 2002, ‘Operation Herrick’ has been the British codename for International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) interventions in Afghanistan. Unlike American military tours, which last a year, the majority of British tours last for six months. As a consequence, the British suffer from the effects of ‘six-month-ism’. One military stabilisation operative informant told me he chuckled when people say that the British have been in Afghanistan for 5 years, arguing, ‘No we haven’t, we’ve been there for ten lots of six months’.

6. To address the balance between kinetic and non-kinetic action, one term that came into use was ‘courageous restraint’. Coined by American General Stanley McChrystal, courage, one of the valorized attributes of soldiering associated with bravery under fire, was connected to a form of self-control that associated bravery with the resistance of conditioned reflexes, valorizing ‘the use of brainpower rather than firepower’. It was subsequently replaced by the phrase ‘tactical patience’, which was deemed to be less confusing for soldiers and, as one of my informants described, ‘more war-y’.

7. MATTs: 1. personal weapon training; 2. fitness, 3. battlefield casualty drills; 4. chemical, biological radiological, nuclear (CBRN), 5. navigation; 6. values and standards; 7. operational law; 8. survival, evasion, resistance, escape (SERE).

8. ‘British-born Afghans’, a collective term used for Afghans brought in to assist with training.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Economic and Social Research Council 1+3 Scholarship.