Damage, recovery, and the geographies of military–civil entanglements

ABSTRACT

This paper explores two forms of entanglements between military and civilian phenomena and activities, in contexts of recovery from damaging events. One concerns global civil–military entanglements in low earth orbital space, where recovery from damage is necessary for sustaining the civilian and military service support systems on which we increasingly depend. The other uses the damage caused by the UK state’s regimes of financial austerity to highlight how gendered, spatialized forms of personal labour through military Reserve forces sustain recovery. Both suggest ways in which military and political geography and geographers can find new ways of thinking through civil–military entanglements.

KEYWORDS:

• Civil–military relations
• entanglement
• military
• reserves
• space
• nuclear

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Information on RAF Fylingdales and its functions comes from an AHRC-funded project, Turning Fylingdales Inside Out: Making practice visible at the UK’s ballistic missile early warning and space monitoring station, Rachel Woodward, Chloë Barker, K. Neil Jenkings and Michael Mulvihill, 2020-23, grant reference AH/S013067/1.

2 Information on the UK Reserves taken from Keeping enough in Reserve: The employment of hybrid citizen-soldiers and the Future Reserves 2020 programme, Rachel Woodward, Antonia Dawes, Tim Edmunds, Paul Higate and K. Neil Jenkings, 2014-18, grant reference ES/L012944/1.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Arts and Humanities Research Council: [Grant Number AH/S013067/1]; Economic and Social Research Council: [Grant Number ES/L012944/1].

Notes on contributors

Rachel Woodward

Rachel Woodward is Professor of Human Geography in the School of Geography, Politics & Sociology at Newcastle University, UK.

K. Neil Jenkings

K. Neil Jenkings is a Senior Research Associate in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University, UK.

Michael Mulvihill

Michael Mulvihill is a Vice Chancellor Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law at Teesside University, UK.