Conference Presentations by Joseph Haigh
In Britain, the First World War soldier is frequently portrayed as the victim of a futile and sha... more In Britain, the First World War soldier is frequently portrayed as the victim of a futile and shambolic war. Scholars, noting the oversimplifications of this mythology, have cautiously welcomed the 2014-18 centenary as an opportunity for more nuanced debate about the conflict and its participants. However, others have warned that the methods through which Britons often engage with the war, such as genealogy projects, as well as the modern context in which victimhood has been a useful tool for various interest groups seeking to shield contemporary soldiers from unpopular conflicts, might reinforce the war’s mythology. This paper engages these themes by exploring the Royal British Legion’s ‘Every Man Remembered’ project. I argue that the tendency of modern discourses of remembrance to construct and draw on an ahistorical, homogenized soldier figure encourages a problematic rehabilitation of the First World War by (re)incorporating the WW1 soldier into the agentic framework of heroic sacrifice, thereby preserving the notion that military sacrifice is the ‘price’ of British freedom. This, in turn, underpins attempts in Every Man Remembered to encourage visitors to vicariously reconnect with the nation, drawing pride from ancestors’ participation and a sense of civic-fulfillment through ostensibly keeping the memory of of unremembered soldiers alive. This is achieved through a problematic framework that militarizes the biographies of the figures involved and underplays the colonial dynamics of the war which ultimately instrumentalises the centenary for modern fundraising purposes.
The murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in May 2013 was marked by an outpouring of public grief and ange... more The murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in May 2013 was marked by an outpouring of public grief and anger and a wave of violence aimed primarily at Muslims. This paper attempts to understand the factors contributing to this passionate response, particularly the significance of his identity as a soldier. Drawing upon recent work in the area of ontological security studies, I use the Lee Rigby case as a ‘strategic lens’ to contribute to the growing literature on recent trends in British civil-military relations. In section 1, I argue that insights from the ontological security perspective can bring much-needed theoretical power to explaining how the military came to occupy a central role in 21st century Britain. In section 2, I explore the manner in which the military has become discursively constructed as the ‘best of British’ by being linked to trans-generational values foundational to British national identity through debates at all levels of society. In
section 3, it is argued that the Lee Rigby case was a ‘critical situation’ which fundamentally violated the established norms around ‘support for soldiers’ and placed the social constructions of ‘heroic soldier’ and ‘radical Islamist’ in violent juxtaposition with one another, prompting both reinforcement of the ‘heroes’ discourse and in some cases, violent actions as a result of ontological insecurity.
Book Reviews by Joseph Haigh
Reinvention: a Journal of Undergraduate Research, Volume 4, Issue 1, 2011
Draft Papers by Joseph Haigh
Short Essays by Joseph Haigh
Debates about the goal of the security scholar abound. Despite the rise of critical security appr... more Debates about the goal of the security scholar abound. Despite the rise of critical security approaches with progressive agendas, there is often trepidation in approaching the practical world. Scholars such as Stephen Walt have made several calls for more robust theories and increased engagement. Whilst few advocate self-imposed exile, there remains hesitancy on how to engage. In this essay, I argue that our project as academics should be both explanatory and normative and that it is indeed impossible to separate these. However, I argue that critical security studies represents a more holistic way of approaching security practices and discourses than positivist theory, and this in turn suggests a more cautious approach to engagement with large projects of progressive change in favour of more limited change based on security meanings and practices in different contexts. In part 1, I begin with a discussion of calls by Walt and Wallace for more engagement with policy through problem-solving theory, and explore the practical and theoretical rebuttals to these from critical security studies; and in part 2, I explore the reasons critical security studies has been hesitant in moving towards progressive change before suggesting the case for cautiously considered engagement, before concluding.
Facing an ostensible ‘threat-deficit’ at the end of the Cold War, some in America began to questi... more Facing an ostensible ‘threat-deficit’ at the end of the Cold War, some in America began to question the role of, and even need for the CIA. The events of September 11, 2001, however, catapulted the CIA into a frontline role in America’s War on Terror. But what has been the nature of this role? In this paper, using the CIA programmes of ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ and ‘Drone Strikes’ as focal point, it is argued that the CIA has been used by Presidents Bush and Obama as a tool of a fundamentally ‘Orientalist’ foreign policy that has sought, in vein most of the time, to control the most pernicious aspects of globalisation. Furthermore it is argued that this has brought the CIA’s dual-functions of intelligence analysis and covert operations into tension with each other and with ethics. Part 1, explores the relationship between intelligence and American national culture in relation to the notions of American ‘Exceptionalism’ and ‘Orientalism’, before linking them to processes of ‘globalisation’. Part 2 analyses the formation of the CIA’s rendition programme and the use of torture. Part 3 explores the continuity in Orientalist logic within the CIA’s use of drones and the ‘kill-not-capture’ doctrine of Obama, before concluding.
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Conference Presentations by Joseph Haigh
section 3, it is argued that the Lee Rigby case was a ‘critical situation’ which fundamentally violated the established norms around ‘support for soldiers’ and placed the social constructions of ‘heroic soldier’ and ‘radical Islamist’ in violent juxtaposition with one another, prompting both reinforcement of the ‘heroes’ discourse and in some cases, violent actions as a result of ontological insecurity.
Book Reviews by Joseph Haigh
Draft Papers by Joseph Haigh
Short Essays by Joseph Haigh
section 3, it is argued that the Lee Rigby case was a ‘critical situation’ which fundamentally violated the established norms around ‘support for soldiers’ and placed the social constructions of ‘heroic soldier’ and ‘radical Islamist’ in violent juxtaposition with one another, prompting both reinforcement of the ‘heroes’ discourse and in some cases, violent actions as a result of ontological insecurity.