Victoria Marie Basham
My work is located in the field of Critical Military Studies. I employ qualitative methods and engage in feminist praxis to examine the character, operation and effects of military power in its various forms. I am also the Editor-in-Chief and co-founder (with Aaron Belkin & Alison Howell) of Critical Military Studies journal (www.tandfonline.com/rcms) and the author of War, Identity and the Liberal State: Everyday Experiences of the Geopolitical in the Armed Forces (Routledge, 2013).
Subjects: Sociology
Biography
Victoria M Basham’s research interests lie in the field of Critical Military Studies at the intersections of feminist international relations, critical geopolitics and international political sociology. Her work seeks to explore how war, and war preparedness, shape people’s daily lives and how daily life can, in turn, influence and facilitate war and other geopolitical outcomes. She is particularly interested in how gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality and social class shape the prioritisation, use and perpetration of military force, especially in liberal democratic societies. In 2015, she became the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Critical Military Studies (Taylor & Francis) which she co-founded.Prior to joining Cardiff (in January 2016), Victoria worked at the University of Exeter (from September 2009) and before that, spent several years at the University of Bristol obtaining her undergraduate degree in Social Policy and Politics (2002), completing her PhD on gender, race and sexuality in the British Armed Forces (2007), and carrying out an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (2007-2008), during which she was also a Visiting Fellow at the York Centre for International and Security Studies, Toronto, Canada.
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
-
International Relations; International Political Sociology; Feminist and Gender Studies; Critical Military Studies; Feminist Security Studies
Books
Articles
Gender, race, militarism and remembrance: the everyday geopolitics of the poppy
Published: Oct 20, 2015 by Gender, Place and Culture
Authors: Victoria M Basham
This article offers a feminist analysis of how British military violence and war are, in part, made possible through everyday embodied and emotional practices of remembrance and forgetting.
Telling Geopolitical Tales
Published: Mar 27, 2015 by Critical Studies on Security
Authors: Victoria M Basham
Subjects:
Military & Security Studies
By examining the case of the ongoing ‘war’ over the Falklands-Malvinas and a particular set of stories where the ‘childish’ has come to characterize relations and differences between Britain and Argentina, this article explores how the temporality of ‘the anniversary’ can enable certain claims, about the rationality of war, as a means of safeguarding sovereignty, identity, and security, to become commonsensical.
What is Critical Military Studies?
Published: Feb 17, 2015 by Critical Military Studies
Authors: Victoria M. Basham, Aaron Belkin, Jess Gifkins
Subjects:
Geography , Sociology, Military & Security Studies, Anthropology - Soc Sci
In the summer of 2011, this journal’s founding editors came together at an interdisciplinary conference on “Military methodologies”, at Newcastle University. The conversation that ensued was an attempt to articulate a niggling sense of what it was that distinguished the rich body of work that we were engaging with and engaged in from most of the rest of military and security studies.
Gender, Race and Border Security Practices
Published: Jun 13, 2012 by British Journal of Politics and International Relations
Authors: Victoria M Basham & Nick Vaughan-Williams
This article develops an interlocking account of the gendered and racialised logics that condition the possibility for contemporary border security practices. We illustrate our approach via an analysis of two visions of contemporary British society and border politics: one offered by Prime Minister David Cameron in his ‘Muscular liberalism’ speech delivered in February 2011; the other contained in Chris Morris' jihadist comedy ‘Four Lions’
Harnessing Social Diversity in the British Armed Forces: The Limitations of ‘Man
Published: Nov 24, 2009 by Commonwealth and Comparative Politics
Authors: Victoria Marie Basham
Subjects:
Military & Security Studies
This article explores how the British Ministry of Defence's aim to accommodate and harness a demographically diverse workforce is undermined by the ways it seeks to manage this change.
‘Everyday Gendered Experiences and the Discursive Construction of Civilian and M
Published: Dec 01, 2008 by Nordic Journal for Masculinity Studies
Authors: Victoria M Basham
Subjects:
Military & Security Studies
This paper examines how hegemonic military masculinities are reinforced by the division of military and civilian. It explores how gendered and sexual assumptions about ‘the soldier’ in the military, and wider society, continue to shape the war system and limit the participation of ‘less-traditional’ recruits in the modern armed forces.
Effecting Discrimination Operational Effectiveness and Harassment in the British
Published: Sep 17, 2008 by Armed Forces and Society
Authors: Victoria M Basham
Subjects:
Military & Security Studies
By undertaking an “effective” reading of policies aimed at managing sexual orientation and gender diversity, and by drawing on qualitative research with members of the British forces, this article demonstrates how the military's own implementation strategies facilitate discrimination against some recruits.