Journal Blog
Introduction November 2022, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I am sipping evening tea with Dario, an electrician from Ukraine, one of the 25 seafarers working on board a the liquified natural gas (LNG) carrier I have been living and conducting ethnographic fieldwork on for almost a month. During this time, I have …
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. “The world is not in your books and maps. It’s out there”, Gandalf noted turning his glance towards the moonlit window. “You’ll have a tale or two to tell of your own when you come back”, he …
Continue reading “‘I’ve seen things …’ and other pleasures of war”
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. Traditional war practices, such as killing are not easily linked with sexual intimacies in war. The image of a soldier is that of a rough-ridding macho-man driven by the desire to kill characterised by bigotry. While this …
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. There has been significant scholarly interest in the militarised and enclaved spaces of international intervention and war(Chandrasekaran, 2010; Fisher, 2017; Weigand and Andersson, 2019). Afghanistan’s “kabbuble”, Baghdad’s ‘Emerald City’, or Mogadishu’s airport ‘green zone’, are among the …
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. War and waring are extremely playful events. Warriors playfully lighten the burden of brutalities that either their anticipation hunts them or they are exposed to in combats. However, warriors’ playfulness is considered intensely transgressive fun by civilians …
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. The experience of military violence during the German ISAF operation has not only been essentially new to German society and the armed forces but also and particularly to the Bundeswehr soldiers. For the first time since the …
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. Anything is better than to have nothing at all happen day after day. You know that I do not love war or want it to return. But at least it made me feel alive, as I have …
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. Yugoslav historiography counted seven major Axis military operations undertaken against the Yugoslav partisan forces during the Second World War. Each of the offensives had as its goal elimination of the partisan resistance and the pacification of the Yugoslav countries. …
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. Soldiers participate in wars for various reasons, some of which are historically, politically and culturally contingent, and others shaped by individual circumstances and dispositions. While research on the U.S. and U.K. militaries has often highlighted soldiers’ desires …
An exploration of soldier humor This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. Are soldiers funny? On the face of it, military life does not appear to hold a lot of fun: soldiers relinquish civil liberties and accept the possibility of injury and death, hierarchy …