This book explores the concept of ‘resilience’ in the context of militaries and militarization. Focusing on the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, and continental Europe, it argues that, post-9/11, there has been a shift away from ‘trauma’ and towards ‘resilience’ in framing and understanding human responses to calamitous events. The contributors to this volume show how resilience-speech has been militarized, and deeply entrenched in imagined communities. As the concept travels, it is applied in diverse and often contradictory ways to a vast array of experiences, contexts, and scientific fields and disciplines. By embracing diverse methodologies and perspectives, this book reflects on how resilience has been weaponized and employed in highly gendered ways, and how it is central to neoliberal governance in the twenty-first century. While critical of the use of resilience, the chapters also reflects on more positive ways for humans to respond to unforeseen challenges.
Author(s): Joanna Bourke, Robin May Schott
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 232
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Chapter 1: Introduction
Resilience: Psychology and Security
Resilience, Social Imaginaries, and Imagined Communities
Resilience as a Traveling Concept
Science/Politics (Knowledge/Power)
Resilience Enters the Military
Militarization
Dominant Themes
Future Research
Conclusion
References
Part I: The Pre-history of Resilience
Chapter 2: A New Psychology of War: The Science of Resilience and the Militarization of Positive Psychology
Introduction
The Roots of Resilience
A Science of Strength and Virtue
Mass Trauma
The Rediscovery of Resilience
Mental Armor
Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: Resilience on the March: Stoic (Social) Grit
References
Chapter 4: Alternative Histories of Resilience: After and Before PTSD
Introduction
Post-9/11: The PTSD-Resilience Nexus
Post-1945: Memory, Narrative and Stress
Pre-1945: Shock, Management and Efficiency
New Histories of Resilience
References
Part II: Contemporary Military Cases
Chapter 5: ‘The Bullet-Proof Mind’: Resilience and Warfighters in the US Marine Corps
Introduction
New Concepts
Crises Within the US Military
Marine Responses
Problems with ‘Resilience’ Training in the Mental Health Intervention Programs
Tensions Between ‘Normal’ and Stigmatized Trauma
Critique of the ‘Resilience’ and Trauma Models
Conclusion
References
Chapter 6: Reconceptualizing Military Resilience Programming in the United States Army as Human Resource Management
Introduction
The Co-constitution of the Field of Psychology with Military Behavioral Health
Defining and Locating Military Resilience
CSF/CSF2
Validation of CSF and CSF2
Measuring Spiritual Fitness
Additional Concerns About the GAT and Justifications for the Platform
Conclusion
References
Part III: Intimate Military Lives and Spirituality
Chapter 7: Toughened Love: The US Military, ‘Resilience’ and the Instrumentalization of Romantic Intimacy
Introduction
The Marital and the Martial
Channelling Positive Emotion: ‘Resilience’ avant la lettre
‘Strong Bonds’
Impossible Injuries—Misdiagnosed?
Conclusion
References
Chapter 8: Resilience as a Failed Concept: The Militarization of Intimate Lives
Introduction
Theoretical Interlude: Failure, Governmentality, and Ideology Critique
The Introduction of Resilience into the Military
Empathetic Critics
Militarization of Family Relations
Adaptive Families
Resilience as a Failed Concept
References
Chapter 9: Measuring the American Soldier’s Spiritual Fitness for Warfare: How the US Army Converts Different Forms of Belief into Different Ways of Being, and Why This Matters
Introduction
The Global Assessment Tool
Measuring Spirituality
How the Army’s Approach to Spirituality Matches a General Ontological Tendency in Cultural Studies
Why Converting Beliefs into Personal Experience and Identity Is Problematic
Resilience and the Politics of Subjectivity
Conclusion
References
Index
