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Project short description

90 - 120 minute tapestry of community voices which locates itself at the intersection of power and lived experience through the lens of militarism, slow violence, and hegemonic masculinities, using a combination of ethnographic and autoethnographic film approaches.

Project long description

The village of Garelochhead sits in the middle of a triangle of nuclear submarine and armaments bases in Argyll on the west coast of Scotland. It is part traditional highland village, part service community, built up in parallel with expansion of the bases since 1945 to house Polaris, Trident and the forthcoming Trident replacement submarines and nuclear weapons.

The local economy depends on the lifeline of the bases in a symbiotic relationship built on supply and demand. In reality it is a relationship of ‘reciprocal exclusivity’ (Fanon, 2001). An uneasy relationship which resides at the intersection of a military permanently on a war footing – a nuclear war footing - and the civilian communities. This ‘acceptable’ friction, reified over the years, reflects a patriarchal hegemony and masculinity at work, which defines and shapes people’s direct experience and the level of ‘acceptable’ experience.

My research seeks to elucidate how power operates within this, how it extends itself into the very fabric of the community and impacts on the everyday experience of people (The MoD declined to take part in the study). It seeks to find a connection between how sexual predation is built into a system which is supposedly about protection, security, work opportunities and mutual benefits.