Dr. Amanda Chisholm - Feminist Scholar and Senior Lecturer at King’s College London, UK
/
CV in brief
EDUCATION: Univeristy of Bristol, PhD in International Relations, with an ethnographic study thesis that examined the role of Gurkhas in private security practices; MA, International Relations and Affairs, Queen’s University; BA, Middle East/African Studies and Politics, University of Alberta
CURRENT WORK: Senior Lecturer in Security Studies, and Lead, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, at King’s College London, UK
CURRENT RESEARCH: Primary Investigator on an Economic and Social Council Research grant, 'From Military to Market'
MOST RECENT BOOK: “Masculinities at the Margins: Beyond the Hegemonic in the Study of Militaries, Masculinities and War”: Routledge, May 2020
To read more about her work please see her website https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/dr-amanda-chisholm
Date of Interview: October 4, 2021
Interview by: Janine Röttgerkamp, Guest Contributor
Three pieces of advice for women, non-binary people and other marginalised genders aspiring to become researchers or policymakers in global security policy:
Believe in yourself, knowing that you have an important voice and expertise to offer the communities and committees that you will sit on, that your voice and experiences matter and that you enrich the space. Own it and believe in that.
Feel open to express your ideas and amplify the voices of others. We are stronger together. Nourishing that community gives you the resilience to emotionally, intellectually and physically continue to fight the pervasiveness of patriarchy, colonialism, sexism and capitalism.
Do listen more than you speak - what Cynthia Enloe calls active and empathetic listening. Listen to the voices of women, non-binary, other marginalised genders and racialized people’s experiences. Take them seriously. As you move up in your career, continue to share that access with others, not just through mentorship but openly advocate for other voices and experiences, as you navigate influential circles that you’ll eventually get into.
Can you tell us about your educational and professional background?
I come from a very rural, working class background in Canada. As a first generation academic, higher education was never something I really saw as aspirational or in my future. When I turned eighteen, I joined the Canadian military as an army medic (emergency medical technician carrying out emergency and rehabilitation medical support in field hospitals and remote locations) and served for five years before going to university. At the time, I wholeheartedly believed in Canada’s unique and important role in making the world a safer place. I believed that the military could foster that development in global peace. I was equally drawn to the travel and physical exertion components of the job and I thought it was a career that I could be proud of. Those attributes continue to motivate my trajectory.
I am now a senior lecturer (assistant professor) at the School of Security Studies, King’s College London and my research and teaching is on gender and global security. In particular, I specialize in Feminist Global Political Economy and Feminist Critical Security Studies. Am also the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion lead for the school, which enables me to put my feminist research into practise and to foster broader inclusivity in higher education, which I am loving.
The gendered implications of war and conflict are central themes in your work. If you think back on your career, what was a key moment that led you to where you are now and what sparked your interest?
The military really set me on the course of understanding security. That experience continues to inform my research, such that I do not assume that the military is this monolithic, homogenous entity but rather that it is made up of a variety of different people and experiences. For example, there’s a large segment that opposes particular wars that they are sent to, but their voices for structural reasons can’t be heard. I am always very careful not to assume that because someone is in a particular institution they share those same sort of values and don’t have conflict. I think it has made me a better researcher, wherein am empathetic to these people and I reflect this in my work.
I left the military for a variety of reasons. At the time, there was public talk about Canada going to Iraq, along with the NATO forces. It was the first time it hit me that I disagree with the occupation. That was the sobering reality that I might be forced to go and be potentially injured or die in a war, that I fundamentally do not believe in. My broader academic pursuits and the curiosities that I have around war, militarism and gender, are really founded upon my experience in the military. The entanglements of war, militarism and gender shape the experiences and possibilities of women, men and of gender non-binary communities globally.
My other aha-moment came in the form of the first Women Studies course I took. Feminist writing for me was not just to talk about security but to really understand security, how it shifts and shapes. i have been convinced that we need to take gender and how it intersects with race, class, sexuality and disability, seriously. Researchers Sarah Ahmed and Clare Hemmings talk about this as coming to feminism through a cognitive dissonance. A lot of people realize through reading and engagement with feminist literature that society was not necessarily designed along the experiences of women, gender non-binary and racialized communities. It is therefore not personal failing that these groups are not excelling in the way others might be, but it’s rather a structural question. Feminist writing enabled me to reflect on my experiences in the military.
Did you have a certain internship or job experience during your studies that brought you further in your career and how did you decide on whether to pursue a PhD?
I didn’t really have any internships, however I pursued volunteer opportunities and participated in spaces and events that allowed me to develop my interests. During my first degree, I signed up to volunteer for a student-based organization that worked in Tanzania. The project was around providing medically-treated bed nets and social marketing. I was also actively involved in the university branch of OXFAM. I was always interested in development work . That helped build and expand my access within a network of practitioners. Here am referring to people whose primary role might not be research embedded in the university. I hate the practitioner-academic divide because I think academics are also practitioners.
I also had very supportive academic mentors that fostered a huge sense of curiosity in me, but also encouraged me that the questions I was asking were important enough to continue to pursue education. Internships are very important if you can get them, but there may not always be an opportunity to come by an internship. It is therefore important to also put yourself out there and expand your own professional and personal network beyond your internal circle. People who you might not immediately think you have common interest with, are often the most interesting. I think what is important with networks is to have people who challenge you, who don’t always agree . That makes you stronger in your career in the long run.
Could you explain how masculinities and militarism are connected and what are the key factors that influence a country’s approach to security policy?
The question itself illuminates the complicated and dynamic nature around militarism and masculinities, which means that it always depends on the context. One way militarism is looked at is to break it down to mean a logic, an embodiment, a discourse or a feeling that privileges the idea that the world is inherently a dangerous place and that a strong military presence focusing on security, domination, control and containment of space and people is our best chance of making ourselves safe. If that’s how we understand it, then militarized masculinities are gendered manifestations and expressions of what kind of person, what kind of intelligence and logic we actually require to fulfill that task. These ideas, like physical strength, power, determination, or assertiveness devalue what is understood as more feminized kind of logic such as community-building, conflict negotiation or de-escalation. You can see how militarised masculinities can very much exacerbate violence. Indeed, there’s some amazing feminist and queer scholar work that has highlighted how militarism and militarized masculinities is not only bad for women, but is bad for men and everyone else, too.
Militarized and gendered logics are entangled with colonial histories and neo-liberal economies in how we go about making the world a safer place. The work of Marsha Henry on female Indian peacekeepers immediately comes to mind. Similarl, Victoria Basham’s, as well as Julia Welland’s and Federica Caso’s research on militarism as a feeling. These works articulate the ways in which broader populations who outside the military are forced to buy into these military logics, for example to support our countries in waging war overseas. With European states, militarism is often rooted in a sense of white supremacy and exceptionalism.
In my own research I have empirically looked at these entanglements between colonial histories, neo-liberal economies, militarism and masculinities by exploring the Nepali militarized communities of the Gurkhas. They are men whose very identity arose through a colonial encounter between the British military and the Nepali state during the anglo-nepali war over two hundred years ago. Through anthropological, very racist writing, the British military talked in very glorifying ways of them and therefore legitimized their forceful acquisition into the British military. These men now have over two hundred years of serving with foreign armies- the British military, the Singaporean police, the Indian army and the Sultan of Brunei. When you go to these local communities, the military service profoundly impacts their social, economic and political realities to the extent that any other pathway beyond military service becomes unthinkable for them. Colonial heritages in militarism and military service fundamentally shape these communities. When these men finish their service with foreign armies, they join private security companies. In my research, look at how they and also their spouses are coerced into quite dangerous and exploitative market relationships. It continues to be exploitative because these men and Nepal as a state, are perpetually on the periphery of the global markets. The global security industry profits from the exploitation and racialization of these labour forces by keeping labour costs down but also extracting exploitative contract arrangements for the profit of western companies and countries. Western countries doing projects in Iraq and Afghanistan for example, are being kept safe through these men. Gurkha communities are embedded in this broader capitalist movement of international development and global security.
How can a feminist foreign policy assure de-escalation and that the most vulnerable groups of society are able to reach evacuation measures in situations of chaos, such as what has been reported at the Kabul Airport in Afghanistan?
The movement of people in particular is very complex and there are lots of parts involved in ensuring the safe movement of people out of a country. I am therefreo not saying that it is simple. But a feminist foreign policy considers human safety over territorial safety, as vital. Any sort of policy decisions or logistic movements will consider particularly the lives and experiences of women and queer people. In all state-to-state negotiations, the development of visa processes and security screenings, for example, would have these people’s experiences at the center. That will look differently depending on the context. In this case, the diversity of Afghan women’s experiences would be at the center. There are a lot of feminists who strongly feel that military occupation and militarism will never make women and queer people, or actually anybody, safe. Afghanistan is kind of a case for that. Twenty years of occupation and what is there to show for? There are some feminists who are a bit more hopeful about military interventions, on condition that they can be feminist informed. This is a debate that is still ongoing and I cannot see it being resolved any time soon. But I think the debate is important and it’s productive because it makes us think about where we need to put our energy and resources as practitioners, researchers and intellectual thinkers.
There are some really great discussions happening in the United States around the defunding of police forces. This doesn’t mean necessarily to totally get away from policing, but rather means to start thinking about how police as a militarized security body have a long legacy of invoking violence on women, queer and racialized communities. There is an opportunity to reconsider the police and military as the only organizations that can provide safety, when in fact their presence invokes and symbolizes a lot of insecurity. The scholarship, creative ideas and resources around abolishing police forces in the United States is something we who are interested in feminist foreign policy should actually be paying attention to. Some relevant questions would be to asked ‘What does it look like to fund more mental health? What does it look like to bring more social workers into play?’ That’s where vibrant and interesting research is happening right now and where we need to start looking for inspiration to become unstuck in reforming institutions that have been designed based on sexism, racism, and colonialism etc.
Do feminist interventions seem to make sustainable impacts and how can young women actively engage to press for change?
Feminist foreign policy is a good thing, but it runs the risk of turning into a tick box or depoliticised entity. Feminism at its heart, same as human rights, is political and it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be a force for radical change that shifts structures and changes positions of privilege. Where feminist foreign policy has fallen short, is that it turns into a political discourse as opposed to concrete security for those who are most marginalized. Where it is an important tool though, is when a country adopts a feminist foreign policy and we, as feminist activists, can then hold this country to account.
We also need, as with any policy, to be reflective on whether the development of this policy is landing where we as feminists want it to and whether it is being experienced in the way we envision. I’m always seeing policy as a living document that is open and it’s important to be critiqued and assessed. Within the broader Women, Peace and Security discussions, knowledge is largely coming from Global North institutions and white women who come from these institutions. This is creating some oversights about how these various policies become meaningful for women of color, women of different classes, sexualities and backgrounds. Jamie J. Hagen, founding co-director of the Centre for Gender in Politics, does some really great work on queering the WPS Agenda. That matters because the needs and experiences of this community are otherwise not captured. As feminist foreign policy becomes more palatable to people, it has a risk of becoming depoliticised and that’s not what is desirable by practitioners and experts. We want to keep it political. Colleagues of mine like Cristina Masters and Linda Ahall have moved away from talking about gender and gender mainstreaming to talk about misogyny, a concept which is harder to depoliticise. It gets researchers, as well as the broader public to reflect on the structural and epistemic violences that women, racialized and gender non-conforming people face. Again, we need to continue to have these people’s experiences placed at the forefront of any feminist foreign policy in order to materialize the changes that it seeks.
Did you face any challenges in your career in academia because of your gender and how did you address them?
Unfortunately, that is still the case as a woman. There are some areas that are improving but you are still going to face everyday sexism from the banal to more extreme forms of sexism. That is certainly true in my case. Security studies itself is still largely male-dominated, particularly when you move away from feminist topics. Gender does matter when it comes to who gets taken seriously and whose voices are taken up in committee meetings, classrooms, who gets talked over, who is allowed to speak etc. Higher education and the military are not exempt. My community helps me get through this. They are peole who understand what the issue is, who experience it, who you can lament with, who you can have a cup of tea with at the end of the day and just unload. I think emotionally, this can wear us down, so having a community that builds you up and supports you is important and should not be underestimated.
I think also what was important for me was finding a mentor. One of my early mentors was Rachel Woodward, a professor in military geography and a feminist. I loved that she was so giving, so smart, so professionally accomplished. She made a point of not working on weekends unless she really had to, she didn’t work in the evenings, she gardened, she cycled. She was the full package of what I wanted in life and she was kind enough to informally mentor me and give me guidance and strategic advice. Finding a good mentor and community who build me up, was key for me navigating these spaces. And now I am in a space where I am taking on more of a mentoring role in amplifying my junior female colleagues who are coming up.
If you are able to share, what would you say has been among the biggest impacts you have made and what was essential in making this happen?
What I am most proud of in my research is that I was actually among the first to write about the security industry as inherently colonial. I’m also proud to amplify and raise voices and experiences of marginalized communities who might not have had that opportunity. I’m very grateful to have been able to spend time with the spouses of the security contractors and gained insight into how they navigate structures of colonialism, but also of caste and patriarchy. Their resilience is very strong and I hope that feeds through in with my writing.
Another thing I feel proud of is my role as an educator. I take teaching very seriously, I love teaching and research. At the heart of my teaching practice is fostering a sense of confidence and empowerment in learners. The aim is that my students will go away feeling that they have an important voice and something to say, equipped with the critical thinking and knowledge to do so. I am very much inspired by the writings of bell hooks (self-styled pen name of Gloria Jean Watkins) and Angela Davis, who look at pedagogy as a space of empowerment. I especially love teaching when there’s a reading that students particularly connect with. I find that is particularly the case with feminist writing and research, because it’s human centered and it brings human perspectives in their diversity and richness, back into global security and global politics. In my view this, this resonates with people more so than abstract ideas of liberal peace theory or game theory.
Thank you so much for your time and wisdom Amanda!
