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Research into war and peace is increasingly concerned with vision and visuality. In this chapter, I consider the value of visual and material culture approaches to new research on war and conflict. These approaches implicate the researcher in a complex set of inquiries into representational, visual and material worlds. Key themes include visual technologies, media images, camouflage, uniform design and the body at war, highlighting the strategic role design and aesthetics play in warfare. A range of examples from various academic studies explore how images, objects and texts mediate modes of seeing, and thus knowing, military institutions and their activities.

This paper takes a radical view for the application of a reflexive approach to the analysis of interview data. It suggests that, if adopted, such an approach allows us to see in our data the use of an ongoing reflexivity of the researcher in the interview. As such, this permits us to observe analysis being undertaken during the interview process—not, as is reported in the literature, as a separate stage. Importantly, if we look at the work of the interviewees, we can also appreciate that they are themselves applying a reflexive approach to their interaction with the interviewer. Indeed, they also undertake a reflexive analysis of the emergent interview and collaboratively contribute to the analytic aspects of the co-produced data which is the research interview. What we suggest is that this being the case, we need to reappraise our view of where analysis of interviews begins, recognize the reflexive nature of interview data production and the contributions of both the interviewer and interviewee to this process in order to recognize and understand the interactional and collaborative practices involved. With respect to photo elicitation we need to recognize that the photograph is not simply a source of information, of details that can be read by the informant. Rather, it is part of a collaborative interaction between the interviewer and interviewee in the production of analysis and data., Dieser Beitrag vertritt einen radikal-reflexiven Ansatz bei der Analyse von Interviewdaten. Es wird die These aufgestellt, dass dieser Ansatz, einmal eingenommen, es erlaubt, die Reflexivität der Forschenden im Interviewverlauf nachzuvollziehen. Die Analyse findet schon im Prozess des Interviews statt und nicht erst, wie in der Literatur meist unterstellt, in einer getrennten Phase danach. Wichtig ist auch anzuerkennen, dass die Interviewten selbst einen reflexiven Ansatz in ihrer Interaktion mit den Interviewenden verwenden; sie führen sozusagen eine reflexive Analyse des ablaufenden Interviews durch und kooperieren dabei mit dem Forscher bzw. der Forscherin in der Erzeugung der Daten des Forschungsinterviews. Wenn dies so ist, dann sollte die Definition korrigiert werden, die festlegt, ab welchem Zeitpunkt die Analyse des Interviews beginnt. Zudem muss die reflexive Natur von Interviewdaten anerkannt werden sowie auch der Umstand, dass beide Parteien zu diesem Prozess beitragen: Mithilfe der Foto-Elizitierung können wir zeigen, dass Fotografien nicht bloß eine Informationsquelle sind, die von den Befragten identifiziert wird, sondern dass eine Interaktion von Interviewenden und Interviewten zur kooperativen Herstellung der Daten und der Analyse vollzogen wird., Este artículo sostiene una visión radical de la aplicación del enfoque reflexivo al análisis de datos de entrevista. Sugiere que tal enfoque permite ver en nuestros datos el empleo de una continua reflexividad por parte del investigador en la entrevista. Esto nos permite ver que el análisis se está realizando durante el propio proceso de entrevista, contrariamente a lo que en la literatura metodológica se concibe como una etapa separada. Si miramos el trabajo del entrevistado también podemos ver que ellos mismos aplican el enfoque reflexivo en su interacción con el entrevistador. Desarrollan además un análisis reflexivo de la emergente entrevista y contribuyen de forma colaborativa al análisis de los datos co-producidos en la entrevista de investigación. Sugerimos, por tanto, la necesidad de revaluar nuestra visión de dónde comienza el análisis de la entrevista, reconocer la naturaleza reflexiva de la producción de los datos de entrevista y la contribución de entrevistador y entrevistado a este proceso, así como reconocer y comprender las prácticas interactivas y colaborativas que esto comprende. Respecto a la elicitación fotográfica debemos reconocer que la fotografía no es meramente una fuente de información cuyos detalles pueden ser leídos por el informante, sino una parte de la interacción colaborativa entre entrevistador y entrevistado en la producción de análisis y datos.

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–military relationships. While it appears that civilian work colleagues’ social distancing of reservists helps consolidate the wider public’s perceived lack of understanding of the British armed forces, a more critical view sees reservists’ largely unchallenged presence in the workplace as an exemplary, yet subtle instance of militarization. This is because reservists’ simultaneous (physical) inclusion and (social) distancing or stigmatization constitutes, and is constitutive of, their need to pass as civilian. In conclusion, we argue that a key implication of their passing as civilian is to neutralize debate of the legitimacy–or otherwise–of the armed forces as an institution tasked with violence on behalf of the state.

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 driven in part by the need to cut costs in defence. However, we also suggest that they are a reflection of the changing nature of modern military organisation, and the manner in which armed forces engage with the societies of which they are a part, and with the citizens that make up that society. We locate FR2020 programme in the context of a wider narrative about the changing nature of military organisation in contemporary western democracies, identifying structural, circumstantial and normative reasons for change. We also examine the specific challenges of implementing FR2020 in practice, including issues of recruitment and retention, integration and support, and relations with families and employers, drawing on the experience of comparator countries to do so. We conclude by considering the implications of these changes, both for the future of UK armed forces, and for the evolving nature of military-society relations in Britain.