It's Just Research, Season 2 Ep 4: Interrogating the Military in Everyday Life

Hosts Dr Sara Black and Dr Pippa Sterk started by asking Dr Dawes about how she landed in academia. Dr Dawes explained how her venture into academia came from a feeling of disillusionment from her corporate career. After self-identifying as ‘not exactly the model undergraduate student’, she went on to work in Marketing. Feeling lost and uninspired, Dr Dawes researched Master’s programmes, leading her to find one that would come to define her future as an antiracist and champion for decolonisation: an MA in Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies at LSE.

From here, Dr Dawes’ eyes were opened to the way we integrate into society, the way our existences are connected, and saw her own place and accountability within the system we exist within. She was inspired to pursue a PhD exploring the multi-ethnic street markets in Naples, which has been transformed into a book called Race Talk: Languages of racism and resistance in Neopolitan street markets, forthcoming with Manchester University Press.

Sara and Pippa however asked Dr Dawes about her recently published book The Military in our Midst: War Preparation and Community on Salisbury Plain and her interests in military research. Dr Dawes and both hosts shared their amazement in the role of the military in the UK, especially the way it exists in the psyche of British people, with the yearly commemoration of war anniversaries, the symbolism of the poppy, and the general feeling that the way to tackle the issues we face globally is through strong military intervention.

Its this fascination that drew Dr Dawes to explore the Salisbury Plain Training Area, the UK’s largest training area, which although may appear nestled amongst other monumental sights such as Stonehenge and the Salisbury Cathedral, actually covers a massive 94,000 acres.

Dr Dawes was drawn to the contradictions between the identity of the military in the UK versus its actual ramifications in the neighbouring societies, and on the greater British public, and on the world.

Dr Dawes commented on the lack of knowledge surrounding how the military budget is being spent, a budget that is funded by the average taxpayer and is being increased, whilst welfare spending is being cut. This secrecy, which she and her fellow researchers were struck by, was only confirmed when, as she shares in the podcast, her and her team were denied permission to enter the training area and speak to trainees. They were left to speak with military-adjacent personnel, spouses and children of those deployed, and the veterans who live and work in the area, on bodies such as the local council to inform their study.

Dr Dawes speaks on the difficulty of not being granted access to private spaces to conduct essential work in the area. She also speaks about the ‘ethical burden’ of conducting this type of ethnographical study in a small area, where participants may be easily identifiable due to the close-knit nature of the communities. Here we can see the difficulties in doing critical work, without exploiting or judging the lived experiences of those ‘military-adjacent’ members.

Further contradictions include the justification of the expansive land-procurement by the military using ecological arguments, which have developed into full-scale reports such as the Nugent Report which issued the establishment of a Military of Defence Conservation Officer. One key selling factor in the protection of these military spaces are the preservation of fairy shrimp, an endangered crustacean which thrive in vernal pools, temporary ponds that are created by tank ruts.

Through her work, Dr Dawes seeks to deconstruct and reconstruct the image of the military in the UK, successfully drawn up by military leaders historically in the UK and around the world.

The episode is now streaming on all major streaming platforms.