Rachel Woodward
Biographic Data
| ID | 244534 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rachel Woodward |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rachel |
| FAMILY NAME | Woodward |
| SIGNATURE | WOODWARD R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Newcastle University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1081-9119 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 736 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Creative research methodologies in critical military studies
Damage, recovery, and the geographies of military–civil entanglements
This paper explores two forms of entanglements between military and civilian phenomena and activities, in contexts of recovery from damaging events.One concerns global civil-military entanglements in low earth orbital space, where recovery from damage is necessary for sustaining the civilian and military service support systems on which we increasingly depend.The other uses the damage caused by the UK state's regimes of financial austerity to hig…
Reflections on Conflict and Culture on the 40th Anniversary of the Falklands/Malvinas War
This introduction to the special issue of the Journal of War and Culture Studies sets out the scope of the collection of articles which reflect in different ways on conflict and culture on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Falklands/Malvinas War. The special issue highlights the diversity of practices of cultural production in response to the war and its legacy. The articles examine: how the war has been remembered in Britain since 1982…
Militarization, stigma, and resistance: Negotiating Military Reservist Identity in the Civilian Workplace
Set against the backdrop of the British Government’s Future Reserves 2020 (FR2020) programme, this article addresses military reservists’ experiences of how they are perceived by civilian colleagues in the workplace. Drawing on qualitative interviews with reservists, it analyses their understandings of civilian co-workers’ qualified and sometimes reluctant acceptance in light of FR2020’s implicit aim to use reservists to help realign civil–milita…
Military Geography
Military geography explores how militarism and military activities are geographically constituted and expressed, seeing these as the outcome of social relations and political contestation. Military geography focuses on the spatialities of military power at a range of scales. It is attentive to the effects of military power and activities in places, and is concerned with the environmental impacts of military practices, both materially and discursi…
The possibilities and limits of impact and engagement in research on military institutions
Military geographical research often requires direct engagement with military institutions. Although the morality of such engagements is often debated, the details of engagement in practice have been less scrutinised. Scrutiny is important, as military engagements can shape research‐derived critiques and can influence the communication of research outcomes to both military and academic research communities. Military engagement comprises the commu…
A Research Agenda for Military Geographies
Spirituality and War: Soldier Practices in Deployment in African Military Landscapes
This special issue is about spirituality and war, and specifically the ways in which soldiers engage with spiritual ideas, beliefs and practices within the context of military deployments. The geog
Interventions on military mobilities
Militarisation, universities and the university armed service units
This paper asks what militarisation looks like when encountered in university settings, using the example of the UK university armed service units. It identifies a specific definition of militarisation, which is then used as a framework to explore the USUs. The USUs have been subject to critique as emblematic of militarisation, and thus problematic. The paper looks at practices where militarisation can be identified as evident on university campu…
Military Geography
Military geography explores how militarism and military activities are both geographically constituted and expressed, seeing these as the outcome of social relations and political contestation. Military geography focuses on the spatialities of military power at a range of scales. It is attentive to the effects of military power and activities in places, and is concerned with the environmental impacts of military practices, both materially and dis…
The Past, Present, and Future of War and Culture Studies
The current issue of the Journal of War and Culture Studies marks both continuity and a moment of transition. It is the second issue of the current volume devoted to the study of the past, present
Reserve forces and the transformation of British military organisation: Soldiers, citizens and society
In recent years there has been a sharp growth in political and sociological interest in the British military. Set against the backdrop of the armed forces increasing presence in everyday life, alongside the organizations’ ongoing restructuring, the current paper focuses on the MoD’s problematic attempts to recruit 30,000 Reservists by 2020; what has become known as the Future Reserves 2020 programme (FR2020). We argue that these changes are drive…
Gendered divisions of military labour in the British armed forces
This paper examines statistical data on the employment of women in the British armed forces. It reviews some of the issues shaping debates about women’s military employment, in order to establish the on-going significance of the topic. It looks at patterns of female military employment across the three services, and places discussion of this in the context of observations about gendered divisions of labour in the wider UK labour market. It examin…
Combat, Cohesion, and Controversy: Disputatio Sine Fine
Following the publication of Anthony King's 2006 article in Armed Forces & Society (The Word of Command: Communication and Cohesion in the Military), Guy Siebold and Anthony King debated the issue of cohesion, in our Disputatio Sine Fine section. King's new book The Combat Soldier grew out of that exchange. The following essay continues the debate by reviewing King's book. The pieces gathered in in this Disputatio are intended as a-temporary-conc…
Military Geography
Regendering the military: Theorizing women’s military participation
This article considers how, in the light of contemporary military transformations, feminist theorizing about women’s military participation might be developed to take account of an emergent reality: the inclusion of increasing numbers of women in a range of roles within armed forces. A brief overview of established debates within feminist scholarship on women’s military participation is provided, and we explore the trajectory of feminist strategi…
Geography, military geography, and critical military studies
This paper is about the distinctive contributions which contemporary military geography might make to the wider critical military studies project. The paper notes the relative absence of the study of military topics across Anglophone human geography in the second half of the twentieth century, and the resurgence of interest in the spatialities of militarism and military activities over the past decade or so in tandem with the emergence of critica…
Communicating War through the Contemporary British Military Memoir: The Censorships of Genre, State, and Self
This paper is about military memoirs—the published autobiographical reflections of those who have participated in armed conflict—as a mechanism for communication about war. In this paper, we consider the controls exerted by functions of genre, military organizational censorship and self-censorship as influences on the possibilities for the military memoir for communicating war. Drawing on memoirs published about experiences with the British Armed…
Practices of Authorial Collaboration: The Collaborative Production of the Contemporary Military Memoir
Although usually marketed as single-authored, interviews with the authors of military memoirs indicated the significance of collaboration with others throughout their writing and publication process. This paper describes the nature of these collaborations. We go on to suggest that collaborative practices were not seen by the authors as diminishing to the centrality of the named author or the reliability of their narratives. That while the collabo…
Military landscapes: Agendas and approaches for future research
This paper reviews existing approaches to military landscapes, establishing the field’s breadth and variety. It suggests areas for future military landscape research around virtual military landscapes, and considers the landscape effects of military privatization and outsourcing, landscape issues pertaining to non-state military actors, the endurance and effects of post-military landscapes, and the role of landscapes of peace and reconciliation. …
Naming the unknown of Fromelles: DNA profiling, ethics and the identification of First World War bodies
This article considers the issues raised by the use of DNA profiling on the remains of the bodies of those lost during the battle of Fromelles in the First World War. In 2009, 250 sets of human remains, from Australian and British war dead, were excavated from the site. DNA profiles from the remains were matched with those of descendants and relatives who came forward for DNA profiling following public appeal. The process of identification raises…
Military memoirs, their covers and the reproduction of public narratives of war
This article explores the role of the covers of military memoirs in articulating and reproducing ideas about men at war. Drawing on the range of published military memoirs about service with the British armed forces from 1980 onwards, the article looks at the covers of these texts as paratextual features that provide a threshold for the reader. The article explores how these covers contribute to public narratives of war, which include discourses …
Wootton Bassett and the political spaces of remembrance and mourning
From 2007 the English village of Wootton Bassett emerged as a site to honour British military personnel killed in action. Repatriation ceremonies developed from a spontaneous act by the citizens of the town into an informal site of national respect for the armed forces. Initially cited by the media as an example to shame the country for its lack of respect for the military, it became both a space for public displays of grief and a site of politic…
This place isn't worth the left boot of one of our boys: Geopolitics, militarism and memoirs of the Afghanistan war
This paper argues for the continued significance of the text as a source and focus in critical geopolitical inquiry. It establishes the utility of the military memoir in explorations of popular contemporary geopolitical imaginaries, and considers the memoir as a vector of militarism. The paper examines the memoirs written by military personnel about service in Afghanistan with the British armed forces, specifically about deployments to Helmand pr…
Warrior Heroes and Little Green Men: Soldiers, Military Training, and the Construction of Rural Masculinities
In this paper I examine military masculinities as a form of rural masculinity. I argue that one model of military masculinity, the warrior hero, acts as a dominant military construction of masculinity. I examine how the countryside as a location, and rurality as a social construction, impinge upon the construction of the ideal type of the warrior hero. The paper draws on recruitment literature, Ministry of Defence publicity materials, popular acc…
From Military Geography to militarism's geographies: Disciplinary engagements with the geographies of militarism and military activities
This paper reviews contemporary approaches in Anglophone human geography to the geographical constitution and expression of militarism and military activities. Three main approaches are identified, and the merits, limitations and insights of each are discussed. These are: traditional Military Geography, intimately associated with state military discourses of military power; a broad political geography, focused on the spatiality of armed conflict;…
Military Identities in the Situated Accounts of British Military Personnel
This article examines individual military identities as articulated by serving and former British military personnel. Following a review of approaches to military identities in both traditional military sociology and more contemporary sociologies of military personnel informed by post-structuralist theories, the article introduces a methodological approach to identities driven by respondents' perspectives generated during photo-elicitation interv…
Geography, military geography, and critical military studies
This paper is about the distinctive contributions which contemporary military geography might make to the wider critical military studies project. The paper notes the relative absence of the study of military topics across Anglophone human geography in the second half of the twentieth century, and the resurgence of interest in the spatialities of militarism and military activities over the past decade or so in tandem with the emergence of critica…
Military landscapes: Agendas and approaches for future research
This paper reviews existing approaches to military landscapes, establishing the field’s breadth and variety. It suggests areas for future military landscape research around virtual military landscapes, and considers the landscape effects of military privatization and outsourcing, landscape issues pertaining to non-state military actors, the endurance and effects of post-military landscapes, and the role of landscapes of peace and reconciliation. …
Regendering the military: Theorizing women’s military participation
This article considers how, in the light of contemporary military transformations, feminist theorizing about women’s military participation might be developed to take account of an emergent reality: the inclusion of increasing numbers of women in a range of roles within armed forces. A brief overview of established debates within feminist scholarship on women’s military participation is provided, and we explore the trajectory of feminist strategi…
It's a Man's Life: Soldiers, masculinity and the countryside
This article explores the relationships between soldiers, masculinity and the countryside. It draws on a variety of published materials ranging from army recruitment literature to military autobiography. It is located primarily in conceptual frameworks suggested by feminist and rural studies literatures. Following a brief discussion of the historical contribution of the military to ideas of rurality, the relationships between soldiers, masculinit…
Writing worlds; discourse, text and metaphor in the representation of landscape
Deprivation’ and ‘the rural’: An investigation into contradictory discourses
Gender and the Limits to Diversity in the Contemporary British Army
This article considers equal opportunities and diversity management policies in the contemporary British Army for what they indicate, not only about policy frameworks for women's military participation, but also for what they tell us about the construction of ideas about gender and difference within that organization. The article sets out contextual information on women in the British Army and describes the research methodology on which this arti…
Heroic anxieties: The figure of the British soldier in contemporary print media
This article is about representations of the figure of the British soldier in contemporary print media. Drawing on photographs reproduced across a range of newspapers over a specified time period in 2006, the article examines the salient features of the construction of the figure of the soldier within this quantity and diversity of images. A key distinction in this group of images is that between the anonymous and the named soldier. The use of ge…
This place isn't worth the left boot of one of our boys: Geopolitics, militarism and memoirs of the Afghanistan war
This paper argues for the continued significance of the text as a source and focus in critical geopolitical inquiry. It establishes the utility of the military memoir in explorations of popular contemporary geopolitical imaginaries, and considers the memoir as a vector of militarism. The paper examines the memoirs written by military personnel about service in Afghanistan with the British armed forces, specifically about deployments to Helmand pr…
Interventions on military mobilities
Reserve forces and the transformation of British military organisation: Soldiers, citizens and society
In recent years there has been a sharp growth in political and sociological interest in the British military. Set against the backdrop of the armed forces increasing presence in everyday life, alongside the organizations’ ongoing restructuring, the current paper focuses on the MoD’s problematic attempts to recruit 30,000 Reservists by 2020; what has become known as the Future Reserves 2020 programme (FR2020). We argue that these changes are drive…
Wootton Bassett and the political spaces of remembrance and mourning
From 2007 the English village of Wootton Bassett emerged as a site to honour British military personnel killed in action. Repatriation ceremonies developed from a spontaneous act by the citizens of the town into an informal site of national respect for the armed forces. Initially cited by the media as an example to shame the country for its lack of respect for the military, it became both a space for public displays of grief and a site of politic…
Discourses of Gender in the Contemporary British Army
This article is about the discourses of gender which circulate within debates about the inclusion of women in the British Army. Drawing on material from elite policy debates within the British Ministry of Defence, Army, and Parliament, the article uses a methodology informed by theories of discourse analysis to examine how the figures of the male and female soldier are constructed. It focuses on three specific policy debates: the expansion in the…
Approaches towards the study of social polarization in the UK
Military Occupations: Methodological Approaches and the Military–Academy Research Nexus
Military occupations are continually evolving in relation to the geopolitical changes of societies, their conflicts and conflict management strategies, and technological developments in military hardware and software. Military occupations studies undertaken by the academy have been key to informing government strategy towards the maintenance of functioning armed forces. Since the 1950s, such studies have prioritised ‘top‐down’ quantitative sociol…
Khaki conservation: An examination of military environmentalist discourses in the British Army
Military memoirs, their covers and the reproduction of public narratives of war
This article explores the role of the covers of military memoirs in articulating and reproducing ideas about men at war. Drawing on the range of published military memoirs about service with the British armed forces from 1980 onwards, the article looks at the covers of these texts as paratextual features that provide a threshold for the reader. The article explores how these covers contribute to public narratives of war, which include discourses …
Combat, Cohesion, and Controversy: Disputatio Sine Fine
Following the publication of Anthony King's 2006 article in Armed Forces & Society (The Word of Command: Communication and Cohesion in the Military), Guy Siebold and Anthony King debated the issue of cohesion, in our Disputatio Sine Fine section. King's new book The Combat Soldier grew out of that exchange. The following essay continues the debate by reviewing King's book. The pieces gathered in in this Disputatio are intended as a-temporary-conc…
Gunning for rural England: The politics of the promotion of military land use in the Northumberland National Park
Mobilising opposition: The campaign against housing action trusts in Tower Hamlets
This paper examines tenant opposition to the British government's plans for Housing Action Trusts (HATs), using material drawn from a case study of the tenants' anti‐HAT campaign in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. After examining the HAT plans, the reasons for tenant objections to the privatisation of their council estates are explained. The political discourse of the anti‐HAT campaign is examined in order to assess the strategies by which s…
Militarization, stigma, and resistance: Negotiating Military Reservist Identity in the Civilian Workplace
Set against the backdrop of the British Government’s Future Reserves 2020 (FR2020) programme, this article addresses military reservists’ experiences of how they are perceived by civilian colleagues in the workplace. Drawing on qualitative interviews with reservists, it analyses their understandings of civilian co-workers’ qualified and sometimes reluctant acceptance in light of FR2020’s implicit aim to use reservists to help realign civil–milita…
The possibilities and limits of impact and engagement in research on military institutions
Military geographical research often requires direct engagement with military institutions. Although the morality of such engagements is often debated, the details of engagement in practice have been less scrutinised. Scrutiny is important, as military engagements can shape research‐derived critiques and can influence the communication of research outcomes to both military and academic research communities. Military engagement comprises the commu…
Report on rural childcare
Mobilising opposition: The campaign against housing action trusts in Tower Hamlets
This paper examines tenant opposition to the British government's plans for Housing Action Trusts (HATs), using material drawn from a case study of the tenants' anti‐HAT campaign in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. After examining the HAT plans, the reasons for tenant objections to the privatisation of their council estates are explained. The political discourse of the anti‐HAT campaign is examined in order to assess the strategies by which s…
Hidden deprivation in the countryside
Writing worlds; discourse, text and metaphor in the representation of landscape
Approaches towards the study of social polarization in the UK
Deprivation’ and ‘the rural’: An investigation into contradictory discourses
It's a Man's Life: Soldiers, masculinity and the countryside
This article explores the relationships between soldiers, masculinity and the countryside. It draws on a variety of published materials ranging from army recruitment literature to military autobiography. It is located primarily in conceptual frameworks suggested by feminist and rural studies literatures. Following a brief discussion of the historical contribution of the military to ideas of rurality, the relationships between soldiers, masculinit…
Gunning for rural England: The politics of the promotion of military land use in the Northumberland National Park
Warrior Heroes and Little Green Men: Soldiers, Military Training, and the Construction of Rural Masculinities
In this paper I examine military masculinities as a form of rural masculinity. I argue that one model of military masculinity, the warrior hero, acts as a dominant military construction of masculinity. I examine how the countryside as a location, and rurality as a social construction, impinge upon the construction of the ideal type of the warrior hero. The paper draws on recruitment literature, Ministry of Defence publicity materials, popular acc…
Khaki conservation: An examination of military environmentalist discourses in the British Army
In trust & on trust: The strategy for the UK defence estate
Partnership Working in Rural Regeneration
Military Geographies
Discourses of Gender in the Contemporary British Army
This article is about the discourses of gender which circulate within debates about the inclusion of women in the British Army. Drawing on material from elite policy debates within the British Ministry of Defence, Army, and Parliament, the article uses a methodology informed by theories of discourse analysis to examine how the figures of the male and female soldier are constructed. It focuses on three specific policy debates: the expansion in the…
From Military Geography to militarism's geographies: Disciplinary engagements with the geographies of militarism and military activities
This paper reviews contemporary approaches in Anglophone human geography to the geographical constitution and expression of militarism and military activities. Three main approaches are identified, and the merits, limitations and insights of each are discussed. These are: traditional Military Geography, intimately associated with state military discourses of military power; a broad political geography, focused on the spatiality of armed conflict;…
Gender and the Limits to Diversity in the Contemporary British Army
This article considers equal opportunities and diversity management policies in the contemporary British Army for what they indicate, not only about policy frameworks for women's military participation, but also for what they tell us about the construction of ideas about gender and difference within that organization. The article sets out contextual information on women in the British Army and describes the research methodology on which this arti…
Sexing the Soldier: The Politics Of Gender And The Contemporary British Army
Sexing the Soldier takes a critical look at how gender - what it means to be a man or a woman - is understood within the contemporary British Army, and the political and practical consequences of this. Drawing on original research, this informaive volume looks at: the history and structure of the British Army as a masculine institution personnel policies which deal with gender issues the construction of ideas about military masculinities and femi…
Narratives of destruction and survival: Writing and reading about life in urban war zones
Narratives of Destruction and Survival: Writing and Reading About Life in Urban War Zones Rachel Woodward (bio) After a night of Israeli Defence Force bombardment in Ramallah, drinking coffee to fight off fatigue, Suad Amiry had a telephone-disrupted morning.1 Fifty-three phone calls from family and friends establish for them that Amiry is safe, despite her close proximity to Israeli artillery. We, her readers, can all perhaps identify with the g…
Sexing the soldier: The politics of gender and the contemporary British Army
Heroic anxieties: The figure of the British soldier in contemporary print media
This article is about representations of the figure of the British soldier in contemporary print media. Drawing on photographs reproduced across a range of newspapers over a specified time period in 2006, the article examines the salient features of the construction of the figure of the soldier within this quantity and diversity of images. A key distinction in this group of images is that between the anonymous and the named soldier. The use of ge…
Military Occupations: Methodological Approaches and the Military–Academy Research Nexus
Military occupations are continually evolving in relation to the geopolitical changes of societies, their conflicts and conflict management strategies, and technological developments in military hardware and software. Military occupations studies undertaken by the academy have been key to informing government strategy towards the maintenance of functioning armed forces. Since the 1950s, such studies have prioritised ‘top‐down’ quantitative sociol…
Military Identities in the Situated Accounts of British Military Personnel
This article examines individual military identities as articulated by serving and former British military personnel. Following a review of approaches to military identities in both traditional military sociology and more contemporary sociologies of military personnel informed by post-structuralist theories, the article introduces a methodological approach to identities driven by respondents' perspectives generated during photo-elicitation interv…
Naming the unknown of Fromelles: DNA profiling, ethics and the identification of First World War bodies
This article considers the issues raised by the use of DNA profiling on the remains of the bodies of those lost during the battle of Fromelles in the First World War. In 2009, 250 sets of human remains, from Australian and British war dead, were excavated from the site. DNA profiles from the remains were matched with those of descendants and relatives who came forward for DNA profiling following public appeal. The process of identification raises…
Military memoirs, their covers and the reproduction of public narratives of war
This article explores the role of the covers of military memoirs in articulating and reproducing ideas about men at war. Drawing on the range of published military memoirs about service with the British armed forces from 1980 onwards, the article looks at the covers of these texts as paratextual features that provide a threshold for the reader. The article explores how these covers contribute to public narratives of war, which include discourses …
Wootton Bassett and the political spaces of remembrance and mourning
From 2007 the English village of Wootton Bassett emerged as a site to honour British military personnel killed in action. Repatriation ceremonies developed from a spontaneous act by the citizens of the town into an informal site of national respect for the armed forces. Initially cited by the media as an example to shame the country for its lack of respect for the military, it became both a space for public displays of grief and a site of politic…
Political science (41 works) · Sociology (34 works) · Law (30 works) · Law (25 works) · Politics (24 works) · Gender, Security, and Conflict (18 works) · History (13 works) · Military History and Strategy (12 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · Gender Studies (11 works)