Paper short abstract:

Peacekeeping is contradictory in relation to militarisation,work and gender.In contrast, studies which demonstrate the pervasive aspects of militarisation, gender orders and disciplinary cultures,other studies show the paradoxes and hybridity involved in contemporary peacekeeping.

Paper long abstract:

They require individuals to straddle paradoxical worlds simultaneously and manage oppositional demands and obligations. For example, the living and working conditions in peacekeeping missions involve classic disciplinary regimes associated with the military such as security checks and monitors on travel and movement, and with capitalist-civic practices such as the pursuit of leisure, pleasure and the 'good life' in off-duty time . The contradictions result in both the crystallisation and diffusion of military, gender and labour norms such that peacekeepers are simultaneously produced and disciplined. As such, peacekeepers as individuals from the civilian, police, military or private contractor wings of global governance institutions (such as UN, AU, and EU) do not inhabit the social, cultural and economic spaces of a peacekeeping mission in clearly uniform or demarcated ways as do traditional military personnel in around conventional bases.