No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 April 2025
Film offers untapped potential for making critical interventions in world politics, particularly in ways that harness people’s capacity to narrate stories that creatively empower their communities. Combining International Relations scholarship on visual politics with narrative theory and feminist scholarship on care, this paper presents film as a means of exploring and expressing narrative agency; that is, the power to tell stories that represent people’s experiences in ways that disrupt hegemonic narratives. Dialectics of care and narrative agency are explored in the context of military-to-civilian ‘transition’ in Britain. We argue that the landscape of transition for military veterans is dominated by a preoccupation with employment and economic productivity, resulting in a ‘care deficit’ for veterans leaving the military. Through the Stories in Transition project, which used co-created film to explore narrative agency in the context of three veterans’ charities, we argue that the act of making care visible constitutes a necessary intervention in this transitional landscape. Grounding this intervention within feminist care ethics and the related notion of care aesthetics, we highlight the potential for film to reveal in compelling audio-visual narratives an alternative project of transition which might better sustain life and hope in the aftermath of military service.
1 Harman, S. (2019). Seeing politics: Film, visual method, and international relations. McGill-Queens University Press.
2 Rai, S. (2024). Depletion: The human costs of caring. Oxford University Press.
3 True, J. (2019). Introduction to Special Section of Social Politics: Postconflict Care Economies. Social Politics, 26(4), 535–537; Rai, S., True, J., & Tanyag, M. (2019). From Depletion to Regeneration: Addressing Structural and Physical Violence in Post-Conflict Economies. Social Politics, 26(4), 561–585; Pereyra-Iraola, V., & Gunawardana, S. (2019). Carceral Spaces and Social Reproduction: Exploring Export Processing Zones in Sri Lanka and Prisons in Argentina. Social Politics, 26(4), 538–560; Chilmeran, Y., & Pratt, N. (2019). The Geopolitics of Social Reproduction and Depletion: The Case of Iraq and Palestine. Social Politics, 26(4), 586–607.
4 Inter alia: Sylvester, C. (2011). Experiencing war. Routledge; Sylvester, C. (2013). War as experience: Contributions from international relations and feminist analysis. Routledge; McSorely, K. (2013). War and the body: Militarisation, practice and experience. Routledge; Kronsell, A., & Svedberg, E. (2012). Making gender, making war: Violence, military and peacekeeping practices. Routledge; Baker, C. (2020). Making war on bodies: Militarisation, aesthetics and embodiment in international politics. Edinburgh University Press; Wibben, A. (2011). Feminist security studies: A narrative approach. Routledge; Wool, Z. (2015). After war: The weight of life at Walter Reed. Duke University Press; Bulmer, S., & Eichler, M. (2017). ‘Unmaking militarized masculinity: Veterans and the project of military-to-civilian transition’. Critical Military Studies, 3(2), 161–181.
5 See, for example, Wool, After war; MacLeish, K. (2013). Making war at Fort Hood: Life and uncertainty in a military community. Princeton University Press; Parashar, S. (2013). What wars and ‘war bodies’ know about international relations. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 26(4), 615–630; Caso, F. (2020). The political aesthetics of the body of the soldier in pain. In C. Baker (ed), Making war on bodies: Militarisation, aesthetics and embodiment in international politics. Edinburgh University Press; Gray, H. (2023). The power of love: how love obscures domestic labour and shuts down space for critique of militarism in the autobiographical accounts of British military wives. Critical Military Studies, 9(3), 346–363; Welland, J. (2013). Militarised violences, basic training, and the myths of asexuality and discipline. Review of International Studies, 39, 881–902; Cree, A., & Caddick, N. (2020). Unconquerable heroes: Invictus, redemption, and the cultural politics of narrative. Journal of War and Culture Studies, 13(3), 258–278.
6 Butler, J. (2010). Frames of war: When is life grievable? Verso.
7 Krystalli, R., & Schulz, P. (2022). ‘Taking love and care seriously: An emergent research agenda for remaking worlds in the wake of violence. International Studies Review, 24(1), viac003, https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viac003.
8 Elias, J., & Rai, S. (2019). Feminist everyday political economy: Space, time, and violence. Review of International Studies, 45(2), 201–220; Fernandez, B. (2017). Dispossession and the Depletion of Social Reproduction. Antipode, 50(1), 142–163; Luxton, M. (2018). The production of life itself: gender, social reproduction and IPE. In J. Elias & A. Roberts (Eds.), Handbook on the International Political Economy of Gender. Eglar Online (37–49). We thank an anonymous reviewer for encouraging us to integrate feminist IPE perspectives on care with care ethics scholarship.
9 Rai, Depletion.
10 Ibid (p. 4).
11 Ibid (p. 25).
12 Jezierska, K. (2024). ‘Maternalism: Care and control in diplomatic engagements with civil society’. Review of International Studies, doi:10.1017/S0260210524000238.
13 Krystalli & Schulz, ‘Taking love and care seriously’.
14 Porter, E. (2016). ‘Gendered narratives: Stories and silences in transitional justice’. Human Rights Review, 17, 35–50; Harman, Seeing politics; Plummer, K. (1995). Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds. Routledge.
15 Plummer, K. (2016). Narrative power, sexual stories and the politics of storytelling. In I. Goodson, A. Antikainen, P. Sikes and M. Andrews (eds), The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History. Routledge, pp. 280–92; Plummer, K. (2019). Narrative Power. Cambridge: Polity Press; Frank, A. (2010). Letting stories breathe: A socio-narratology. University of Chicago Press; Andrews, M. (2014). Narrative Imagination and Everyday Life. Oxford University Press; Wibben, Feminist security studies.
16 Bleiker, R. (2018). Visual global politics. Routledge; Harman, Seeing politics; Shapiro, M. (2009). Cinematic geopolitics. Routledge.
17 Tronto, J. (2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality and justice. New York University Press; Held, V. (2006). The ethics of care: Personal, political, and global. Oxford University Press; Robinson, F. (2011). The ethics of care: A feminist approach to human security. Temple University Press; Jezierska, ‘Maternalism: Care and control in diplomatic engagements with civil society’.
18 Thompson, J. (2015). Towards an aesthetics of care. Research in Drama Education, 20(4), 430–441; Thompson, J. (2023). Care aesthetics: For artful care and careful art. Routledge.
19 Enloe, C. (2000). Maneuvers: The international politics of militarizing women’s lives. University of California Press; Eichler, M. (2012). Militarizing men: Gender, conscription and war in post-Soviet Russia. Stanford University Press; Kronsell & Svedberg, Making gender, making war; Withworth, S. (2013). Militarized masculinity and post-traumatic stress disorder. In M. Zalewski and J.L. Parpart (eds.), Rethinking the man question: Sex gender and violence in international relations. Bloomsbury.
20 Bulmer & Eichler, ‘Unmaking militarized masculinity’ (p. 162).
21 Caddick, N. (2024). The cultural politics of veterans’ narratives: Beyond the wire. Edinburgh University Press.
22 Massey, R., & Tyerman, T. (2023). ‘Remaining “in-between” the divides? Conceptual, methodological, and ethical political dilemmas of engaged research in Critical Military Studies’. Critical Studies on Security, 11(2), 64–82.
23 Wadham, B., Connor, J., Hamner, K., & Lawn, S. (2023). ‘Raped, beaten and bruised: Military institutional abuse, identity wounds, and veteran suicide’. Critical Military Studies. doi:10.1080/23337486.2023.2245286.
24 Cree, A., & Caddick, N. (2019). ‘Unconquerable heroes: Invictus, redemption and the cultural politics of narrative’. Journal of War & Culture Studies, 13:3, 258–278; MacLeish, K. (2020). ‘Churn: Mobilization-demobilization and the fungibility of American military life’. Security Dialogue, 51(23), 194–210; MacLeish, K. (2021). ‘Moral injury and the psyche of counterinsurgency’. Theory, Culture & Society, 39(6), 63–86.
25 For example in the controversies surrounding the government body ‘Veterans UK’ which administers War Pensions and compensations to veterans, notable in their own poor ‘customer’ satisfaction survey results: DBS_Veterans_Customer_Satisfaction_Results_2021_report-O.pdf (publishing.service.gov.uk).
26 Wadham et al. ‘Raped, beaten and bruised’.
27 Wieskamp, V. (2019). ‘“I’m going out there and I’m telling my story”: victimhood and empowerment in narratives of military sexual violence’. Western Journal of Communication 83(2), 133–50; Herriott, C., Wood, A., Gillin, N., Fossey, M. and Godier-McBard, L. (2023). ‘Sexual offences committed by members of the armed forces: is the service justice system fit for purpose? Criminology & Criminal Justice. https://doi.org/10.1177/17488958231153353; MacKenzie, M. (2023). Good Soldiers Don’t Rape: The Stories We Tell about Military Sexual Violence. Cambridge University Press.
28 Basham, V. (2013). War, identity and the liberal state. Routledge; Enloe, Maneuvers.
29 Cooper, L., Caddick, N., Godier, L., Cooper, A. and Fossey, M. (2018). ‘Transition from the military into civilian life: an exploration of cultural competence’. Armed Forces and Society 44(1), 156–77; Albertson, K. (2019). ‘Relational legacies impacting on veteran transition from military to civilian life: trajectories of acquisition, loss, and reformulation of a sense of belonging’. Illness, Crisis & Loss, 27(4), 255–73.
30 Plummer, Telling Sexual Stories (p. 26).
31 Porter, ‘Gendered narratives’; Nelson, H. (2001). Damaged identities, narrative repair. Cornell University Press.
32 Frank, A. (2004). The renewal of generosity: Illness, medicine, and how to live. University of Chicago Press.
33 Wendt, A. (1987). The agent-structure problem in international relations. International Organization, 41(3), 335–370; Wight, C. (1999). They don’t shoot dead horses do they? Locating agency in the agent-structure problematique. European Journal of International Relations, 5(1), 109–142; Davies, B. (1991). The concept of agency: A feminist poststructuralist analysis. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology, 30, 42–53; Joseph, J. (2008). Hegemony and the structure-agency problem in international relations: A scientific realist contribution. Review of International Studies, 34, 109–128; Hollis, M., & Smith, S. (1994). Two stories about structure and agency. Review of International Studies, 20, 241–251; Jabri, V., & Chan, S. (1996). The ontologist always rings twice: Two more stories about structure and agency in reply to Hollis and Smith. Review of International Studies, 22, 107–110.
34 Roselle, L., Miskimmon, A., & O’Loughlin, B. (2014). Strategic narrative: A new means to understand soft power. Media, War & Conflict, 7(1), 70–84; Miskimmon, A., O’Loughlin, B., & Roselle, L. (2017). Forging the World: Strategic Narratives and International Relations. University of Michigan Press.
35 Holland, J., & Mathieu, X. (2023). Narratology and US foreign policy in Syria: Beyond identity binaries, toward narrative power. International Studies Quarterly, 67(4), https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqad078.
36 Plummer, Telling Sexual Stories (p. 26).
37 Frank, A. W. (2012). ‘Practicing Dialogical Narrative Analysis.’ In Varieties of Narrative Analysis, edited by J. A. Holstein and J. F. Gubrium, 33–52. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. (p. 35).
38 Smith, B., & Sparkes, A. (2008). Contrasting perspectives on narrating selves and identities: An invitation to dialogue. Qualitative Research, 8(1), 5–35.
39 Caddick, The cultural politics of veterans’ narratives; Phoenix, A. (2012). Analysing narrative contexts. In M. Andrews, C. Squire, & M. Tamboukou (Eds.), Doing narrative research. Sage. (pp. 72–87).
40 Harman, Seeing politics (p. 105).
41 Ibid (p. 15).
42 Crilley, R. (2021). Where we at? New directions for research on popular culture and world politics. International Studies Review, 23, 164–180; Grayson, K., Davies, M., & Philpott, S. (2009). Pop goes IR? Researching the popular culture—world politics continuum. Politics, 29(3), 155–163.
43 Further examples of film production in IR can be found in the work of William Callahan, Cynthia Weber and James Der Derian. See, Callahan, W. (2015). The visual turn in IR: Documentary filmmaking as a critical method. Millenium, 43(3), 891–910; Weber, C. (2010). I am an American: Filming the fear of difference. University of Chicago Press; Der Derian, J. (2010). Now we are all avatars. Millenium, 39(1), 181–6.
44 Harman, Seeing politics (p. 54).
45 Ibid (p. 52).
46 Ibid (p. 38).
47 Bleiker, Visual global politics; Bleiker, R. (2001). The aesthetic turn in international political theory. Millenium, 30(3), 509–533; Shapiro, Cinematic geopolitics; Der Derian, J. (2009). Virtuous war: Mapping the military-industrial-media-entertainment network. Routledge; Grayson et al, ‘Pop goes IR?’; Crilley, ‘Where we at?’; Callahan, The visual turn in IR; Faux, E. (2024). Navigating nuclear narratives in contemporary television: The BBC’s Vigil. Review of International Studies, doi:10.1017/S026021052300075X.
48 Harman, Seeing politics; Bleiker, Visual global politics.
49 Bleiker, Visual global politics.
50 Ibid (p. 22).
51 Van Veeren, E. (2018). Invisibility. In R. Bleiker, Visual global politics (p. 196–200) (p. 199).
52 Rancière, J. (2004). The politics of aesthetics. Bloomsbury.
53 Shapiro, Cinematic geopolitics (p. 18).
54 Tronto, Caring democracy (p. 19, emphasis original).
55 Ibid.
56 Held, The ethics of care; Robinson, F. (1997). Globalizing care: Ethics, feminist theory, and international relations. Alternatives, 22(1), 113–133.
57 Held, The ethics of care.
58 Jezierska, ‘Maternalism’.
59 Krystalli & Schulz, ‘Taking love and care seriously’.
60 Pettersen, T. (2021). Feminist care ethics: Contributions to peace theory. In T. Väyrynen, S. Parashar, É. Féron & C. Confortini (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Feminist Peace Research (pp. 28–39); Vaittinen, T., Donahoe, A., Kunz, R., Ómarsdóttir, S., & Roohi, S. (2019). Care as everyday peacebuilding. Peacebuilding, 7(2), 194–209.
61 Elias & Rai, ‘Feminist everyday political economy’; Rai, Depletion; Rai et al., ‘From Depletion to Regeneration’.
62 Thompson, ‘Towards an aesthetics of care’; Thompson, Care Aesthetics.
63 Thompson, ‘Towards an aesthetics of care’ (p. 437).
64 Thompson, Care aesthetics (p. 99).
65 Bleiker, Visual global politics.
66 Thompson, Care aesthetics (p. 99).
67 Ibid (p. 100, emphasis added).
68 Ashcroft, M. (2014). The veterans’ transition review. Online: vtrreport.pdf (veteranstransition.co.uk) (p. 8).
69 Policy narratives such as the UK’s ‘Strategy for our veterans’ work to normalise the figure of the successful, entrepreneurial veteran through claims that psychological impairment and ‘brokenness’ in British veterans constitute ‘negative and incorrect stereotypes’, and that ‘military service instils positive values such as self-discipline and loyalty’, thereby casting a positive light on military service and downplaying negative consequences that can also result. See HM Government (2022). ‘Veterans’ strategy action plan 2022–2024’. Online: Veterans’ Strategy Action Plan 2022–2024 (publishing.service.gov.uk) (p. 32).
70 Cooper et al., ‘Transition from the military into civilian life’; Albertson, ‘Relational legacies impacting on veteran transition from military to civilian life’; MacLeish, ‘Churn’; Demers, A. (2011). ‘When veterans return: The role of community in reintegration’. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 16, 160–179.
71 Caddick, The cultural politics of veterans’ narratives.
72 Albertson, ‘Relational legacies impacting on veteran transition from military to civilian life’; Mobbs, M., & Bonanno, G. (2018). Beyond war and PTSD: The crucial role of transition stress in the lives of military veterans. Clinical Psychology Review, 59, 137–144; Maringira, G., & Carrasco, L. (2015) ‘Once a soldier, a soldier forever’: Exiled Zimbabwean soldiers in South Africa. Medical Anthropology, 34(4), 319–335.
73 Cf. Rai, Depletion. Regarding depleted cultures of care, see also Hochschild, A. R. (2004). Love and gold. In B. Ehrenreich & A. R. Hochschild, (Eds.), Global women: Nannies, maids, and sex workers in the new economy. Owl Books.
74 On mediated representations of the veteran dominating public understanding, see MacLeish, Making War at Fort Hood; McCartney, H. (2011). ‘Hero, victim or villain? The public image of the British soldier and its implications for defense policy’. Defense & Security Analysis 27(1), 43–54.
75 Each of these veterans were beneficiaries of the charities involved in the project. Some also worked for the charities either as volunteers or in paid roles. In the following discussion, contributors are named when their words appear publicly in the films. At other times, their words are acknowledged as those of ‘our co-creators’ in line with standard conventions on anonymity in research practice.
76 The films are publicly available online: Turn to the Wind: https://aru.figshare.com/articles/media/Turn_to_the_Wind/25158734?file=44440352; Return, Belong, Prosper: https://aru.figshare.com/articles/media/Return_Belong_Prosper/25159604?file=44441945; Leave No One Behind: https://aru.figshare.com/articles/media/Leave_No_One_Behind/25159931?file=44442380.
77 Fox, N. (2022). Without the filmmaking there is no research: establishing the Sound/Image Cinema Lab via a REF2021 impact case study and exploring the impact of its engagement with UK film production, Media Practice and Education, 23:2, 161–173; Aquilia, P., & Kerrigan, S. (2018). Re-visioning screen production education through the lens of creative practice: An Australian film school example. Studies in Australasian Cinema, 12(2–3), 135–149; Batty, C., & Kerrigan, S. (2018). Screen production research: Creative practice as a mode of enquiry. Palgrave Macmillan.
78 Recent work has also highlighted the potential of using filmmaking as a tool to promote community integration and encourage veterans to engage in treatment for PTSD. See Drebing, C., et al. (2023). ‘Pilot outcomes of a filmmaking intervention designed to enhance treatment entry and social reintegration of veterans’. Psychological Services, 20(3), 585–595.
79 Fox, ‘Without the filmmaking there is no research' (p. 164).
80 Thompson, Care aesthetics (p. 25).
81 Cizek, K., Uricchio, W., et al. (2019). Collective wisdom: Co-creating media within communities, across disciplines and with algorithms. MIT Open Documentary Lab: doi:10.21428/ba67f642.f7c1b7e5.
82 Vostal, F. (2016). Accelerating academia: The changing structure of academic time. Palgrave Macmillan.
83 For critical analysis of veterans as mistreated and misunderstood, see for example, McLoughlin, K. (2018). Veteran Poetics: British Literature in the Age of Mass Warfare, 1790–2015. Cambridge University Press.
84 Bleiker, ‘The aesthetic turn in international political theory’ (p. 512).
85 Caddick, The cultural politics of veterans’ narratives.
86 Marzi, S. (2023). ‘Co-producing impact in process with participatory audio-visual research’. Area, 55, 295–302.
87 Harman, Seeing politics.
88 The processing of veterans through employment and outcomes-focused programmes (both state and third-sector funded) resonates with Ken MacLeish’s notion of churn as a description of the embodied and cyclical nature of military labour into, through, and out of the military machine. See MacLeish, ‘Churn’. As veterans exit the military and become indicators of success or failure in accordance with their employment status, the churn continues, reproducing as it does so the conditions for a largely care-deficient post-military reality.
89 See, for example, Marzi, ‘Co-producing impact-in-process’.
90 Bleiker, R. (2017). In search of thinking space: Reflections on the aesthetic turn in international political theory. Millenium, 45(2), 258–264; Marzi, ‘Co-producing impact-in-process’.
91 Thompson, Care aesthetics. (p. 43).
92 Andrews, Narrative imagination and everyday life.
93 Held, The ethics of care. See also Krystalli & Schulz, ‘Taking love and care seriously’.
94 Harman, Seeing politics (p. 42).
95 Marzi, ‘Co-producing impact in process’.
96 Plummer, ‘Narrative power, sexual stories and the politics of storytelling’.
97 Wibben, Feminist security studies.
98 Harman, Seeing politics (p. 15).
99 Tronto, Caring democracy (p. 139). On market logics as the driving force behind state interventions on behalf of the veteran, see also Sanna Strand (2021), ‘Inventing the Swedish (war) veteran’. Critical Military Studies, 7(1), 23–41.
100 Goldblatt, B., & Rai, S. (2018). Recognizing the Full Costs of Care? Compensation for Families in South Africa’s Silicosis Class Action. Social & Legal Studies, 27(6), 671–694.
101 Albertson, ‘Relational legacies impacting on veteran transition from military to civilian life’.