Description
This paper explores the complexities of negotiating one’s positionality when researching the military, whilst engaging with a longstanding personal connection with the institution. Despite being female defence researchers, we have nonetheless had the advantage of familiarity, access and common understanding when interacting with military personnel and organisations in the course of our research. However, reflecting on this familiarity has called our positionality as researchers into question, leading us to question the assumptions we instinctively make as a result of our backgrounds. This paper takes the form of a semi-structured conversation between the two female authors: where one experienced the military as the ‘replacement family’ of her serving father and yet still talks of the military as ‘we’; the other experienced being part of the deployed military family and yet left to start her own. Using dialogue as reflexive practice, their conversation is prompted by photographs that document moments of the ‘military as family’ in their lives from weddings and childhood memories to uniform and remembrance. We explore the multiplicity of ways one can ‘know’ the British military, and how recognising where our different experiences intersect has unlocked new understandings of the ‘insider-outsider’.
