Description
Militarism can be felt in many different ways, in many different places. From poppies to combat uniforms, Officer Training Corps on campus to conscript discounts, the everyday manifestations of militarism are perhaps the most insidious, and the most insightful aspects of an armed force’s relationship to its civilian population. This paper seeks to firstly see, and then assess, the everyday and banal manifestations of militarism in the UK and Finland. As a founding member of NATO and a (former) colonial power, the military holds a specific, political, and contentious space in British public life. As NATO’s newest member, by contrast, and a formerly colonised nation, Finnish notions of defence, security, and the armed forces are at once less politicised yet more present in the everyday, due in part to Finland’s 300km Russian border. Building on Critical Military Studies’ engagement with aesthetics of militarism, this paper will compare and contrast the banal expressions of militarism in the UK and Finland to better understand the place and politics of martial violence in each state. Specifically, we ask what can a comparison between these two differing contexts reveal about the resilience and/or fallibility of militarism? Empirically, it builds on auto-ethnographical insights from the authors’ experiences working in British and Finnish universities and observations from celebrations of Armistice Day and Independence Day in the UK and Finland respectively.
