Doctoral Dissertation Research: Labor and Livelihoods within Militarized Communities

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

Soldiers are a critical part of the labor force in militarized communities. Anthropological theories about the work of soldiers often focus on the risk and uncertainty associated with conflicts affecting them and the related effects on the human experience and social lives. However, being a soldier also provides stable employment and provides new social relationships within communities that are offset from other aspects of daily life. How do these social relationships affect the experience of being a soldier? Does the everyday labor of being a soldier provide experiences that are distinct from those associated with active conflict? This doctoral dissertation project synthesizes theory from economic anthropology and the anthropology of social structure to investigate the tensions between stability and risk inherent to the military experience and its effects on livelihoods in conflict zones. It trains a U.S.-based graduate student in anthropological theory and methods and involves extensive dissemination of findings for scholarly and non-scholarly audiences. Specifically, this doctoral dissertation project examines the lives and livelihoods of paid soldiers in militarized communities. Through ethnographic observation and life history interviews of soldiers where they reside and work, this project investigates how being a soldier contributes to household labor and the activities that soldiers pursue to enhance their job performance or retreat from daily stressors. It asks whether soldiers’ social networks inside and outside of the military context affect their understandings of labor, for example, and how the labor of being a soldier in turn alters those networks. By considering the way militarized social and economic spaces provide possibilities for certain forms of work and social relationships to be pursued, this project not only provides a novel approach to the study of security, but also contributes to social scientific studies of political economy and gender. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.