[News] Cfp RGS Session

[Luise Klaus]

Eine Weiterleitung:

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Dear colleagues,

With apologies for cross-posting, we are excited to share the Call for 
Papers (CfP) for our proposed session at the *RGS-IBG 2025 *conference 
in Birmingham in August.

We are looking forward to your applications and an inspiring session!

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Best wishes,

Linda Ruppert, Kathrin Hörschelmann and Bettina Bruns

*Cfp: Critical Approaches to Militarization, Weapons Technologies, 
Bodies & Space *

The current intensification of geopolitical tensions, including Russia’s 
war in Ukraine, the Middle East conflict and armed conflicts in 55 other 
countries (Sipri 2023), raises numerous questions about the political 
roles of militaries and their place within states, societies and 
economies. While military infrastructures, discourses and imaginations 
are an everyday presence, even in peacetime (Woodward 2004), the extent 
to which they are in the public eye, are justified, normalized or 
politically debated and contested varies significantly within and 
between states.

The Russian war in Ukraine is but one of numerous violent conflicts 
around the world that requires attention. However, we see the growth in 
debates that it has prompted on the place of the military in societies 
that have not experienced armed conflict since the end of the Second 
World War as a potential turning point in their relations between 
military, weapons technologies, state and citizens. This requires 
critical scholarly reflection. Current public debates here raise 
questions about the extent, aims and impact of militarisation, about its 
legitimation and about the contestation of militarisation as „the 
process of bringing military values into civilian life” (Jackson 
2019:258). As Woodward (2014:41) has argued, militarisation is a 
“multi-faceted set of social, cultural, economic and political processes 
by which military approaches to social problems and issues gain both 
elite and popular acceptance.” It is simultaneously a discursive process 
of intensifying the allocation of labour and resources to the military.

Changing military recruitment procedures, their connections to a range 
of social inequalities, public debates about tasks and missions of the 
military, about investments in military hardware, infrastructure, 
personnel and administration, and about the scale and reach of 
military-industrial complexes indicate ongoing problematisations and 
renegotiations of the place of the military in society, its role within 
states and its relations to civilians (cf. Mannitz 2012). A geographical 
perspective allows making statements about the territorial embeddedness 
of military practices as well as analysing the effects of militarization 
across different scales.

With this session, we aim to provide a space for critical exchanges and 
invite papers that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

- The politics, geographies, forms and societal impacts of everyday 
militarisation

- Civil-military relations and the place of the military within 
state-citizen relations

- Relations between national identity, patriotism and militarisation

- Unequal militarisations and dependencies: intersections with and 
between gender, sexuality, age, class, ethnicity and race

- Historical influences on militarisation and the military, including 
the role of collective memory

- Responsibilisation, military subjectification - disciplinary and 
biopolitical power

- New military technologies and the Soldier’s body

- The role of paramilitary and civil defence organisations, including 
their relations to the state and to state militaries

- The role of military technologies in geopolitical positioning

- The impact of imaginations of future threats scenarios and battlefield 
constructions on present military decisions

- Emotional politics and the affective dimensions of militarisation, 
including military technologies and infrastructures

- Anti-military practices and conscientious objection

- Ethical complexities and methodological questions of critical military 
research

Please submit your abstracts (max. 300 words) via email to Linda Ruppert 
(linda.ruppert at uni-heidelberg.de 
<mailto:linda.ruppert at uni-heidelberg.de>), Kathrin Hörschelmann 
(hoerschelmann at uni-bonn.de <mailto:hoerschelmann at uni-bonn.de>) and 
Bettina Bruns (B_Bruns at leibniz-ifl.de <mailto:B_Bruns at leibniz-ifl.de>) 
until *Thursday, 27th of February**. *

**

*Cited literature*

**

Jackson, Susan T. “‘Selling’ National Security: Saab, YouTube, and the 
Militarized Neutrality of

Swedish Citizen Identity.” Critical Military Studies 5, no. 3 (2019): 
257–275. doi:10.1080/

23337486.2017.1395675.

Mannitz, Sabine (2012) Democratic civil-military relations: Soldiering 
in 21st-century Europe. London, New York: Routledge.


SIPRI (2023) Yearbook 2023, 7. World nuclear force.Stockholm 
International Peace Research Institute.

Woodward, Rachel. „Military landscapes: Agendas and approaces for future 
research.” Progress in Human Geography 38(1): 40-61

Woodward, Rachel (2004) Military Geographies. Malden, Oxford, Carlton: 
Blackwell.

-- 
Luise Klaus (sie/ihr, she/her)
Institut für Humangeographie

Goethe-Universität
Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 6
PEG-Gebäude, Raum 2.G067
60629 Frankfurt am Main

klaus at em.uni-frankfurt.de
@LuiseKlaus
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