This dissertation examines narratives given by elite foreign policy voices during the Canadian Forces’ involvement in the 2001–2014 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission(s) in Afghanistan. Part I introduces the topic and outlines the theoretical and methodological ap- proaches used. Part II explores three dominant narratives presented by foreign policy elites: (a) Canada was in Afghanistan to support our NATO allies and to avoid dam- aging our international reputation; (b) Canada was in Afghanistan to fight terrorism and promote security abroad to reduce the domestic threat of terrorism to Canada’s borders; and (c) Canada was in Afghanistan to assist with humanitarian projects to help Afghans. I explore these narratives in light of a long-standing identity myth about Canada’s role in international politics: Canada-as-Peacekeeper. I examine attempts by foreign policy elites to use the mission in Afghanistan to re-militarize Canadian foreign policy and shed the peacekeeper myth. Part III demonstrates that official war discourses are a result of political negotiations and hegemonic power. Using the Support the Troops campaign, I demonstrate that critics of policy in Afghanistan were silenced using pro-military rhetoric. I argue that the control of foreign policy narratives and the de-politicization of the military as political agents have many problematic effects, most notably that military violence is often cast as an appropriate solution for global political problems. I argue that preoccupation with Canada’s place in the world (i.e. Canada’s international identity) in foreign policy scholarship has under-theorized how narratives about Canadian foreign policy distort and omit particular perspectives. Official discourse on Afghanistan was highly euphemized and politically strategic. The mythologized belief that Canada is a middle-power “helpful-fixer” obscures the actual violence that occurs within military interventions and omits the burden of trauma experienced by soldiers and foreign bodies. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Police paramilitary units emerged as a tool for police agencies during the 1980’s to deal with dangerous calls for service such as hostage situations, barricaded persons, terrorism and sniper situations. American policing scholars began tracing the annual call outs of tactical units to determine if tactical policing has shifted away from its original purpose towards a more proactive police response. Canadian literature on police militarization is limited but follows similar American research trends by focusing on the annual callouts of Canadian tactical teams to prove that tactical policing has been normalized. This project uses Bourdieusian concepts (field struggle, capital, symbolic power) to address gaps in the existing literature surrounding police militarization by determining the strategies and capital used by community groups and the police to defend and contest police militarization in Canada. This helped answer the primary research question of: What arguments do police, government officials and civil society groups make to support or contest police militarization? What forms of power and symbolic power are utilized to shift opinion? Relying on a Critical Content Analysis, this project established deductive categories from newspaper articles, recommendations from Independent Inquiries and media releases from community activist websites to understand the contests of police militarization. Findings from this project were similar to previous literature regarding the arguments mobilized by the police about police militarization; however, community groups played a more active role in contesting the dominant agendas of state actors through mobilizing moral and emotional arguments. Emotional arguments were influenced by the deaths of George Floyd and Michael Brown and allowed community groups to contest police militarization through defunding and demilitarization arguments. Moreover, findings show that both the police and community groups use community safety arguments to contest and defend police militarization. Legal arguments were also mobilized by relevant parties to address Indigenous human rights violations produced through militarized police dynamic entries. The findings also showed the impacts of high-profile cases on trends within police militarization. The Independent Inquiries following high profile cases such as the Moncton (2014) and Mayerthorpe (2005) shootings influenced military equipment procurement and SWAT standards across Canada. A Political Sociological analysis of my findings revealed the struggle within the field of police militarization regarding the procurement of militarized equipment. This project provided a snapshot of police militarization in Canada to help understand the ongoing militarization issues as well as the relevant actors who are involved in the discourse. Directions for future research are presented at the end of this study.

Determining what constitutes the proper role and characteristics of a constabulary has received renewed interest in recent years as the international community increasingly involves itself in peace and stability operations. The U.S. invasion of Iraq has further stimulated discussion over how foreign powers should go about establishing security institutions within a host nation, particularly in one as turbulent as Iraq. Recent events in both Iraq and Afghanistan have made clear the importance of indigenous police forces, or constabularies, to pacification and state-building operations. Effective constabularies can perform the key role of separating insurgents from the population and giving substance and legitimacy to federal and local government. This thesis examines two U.S.-organized paramilitaries: the Philippine Constabulary (1901-1917) and the Haitian Gendarmerie (1916-1934). It argues that in both the Philippines and Haiti, the constabularies became armies, and the instruments of autocratic rule, because American military officers allowed the militarization of the police forces to become institutionalized without also establishing normative constraints on the use of military power. The thesis contends that American military authorities undermined the constabularies’ suitability for enforcing civil law by aggressively developing their military capabilities to meet the challenges of fighting violent insurgencies. Both organizations generalized their pragmatic responses to immediate circumstances without considering the long term implications for them as institutions. The historical experience of the Constabulary and Gendarmerie testify to the real temptation for leaders to stretch an organization beyond its mandate or capabilities by focusing on success and victory over purpose and the ends for which the organization exists.

Determining what constitutes the proper role and characteristics of a constabulary has received renewed interest in recent years as the international community increasingly involves itself in peace and stability operations. The U.S. invasion of Iraq has further stimulated discussion over how foreign powers should go about establishing security institutions within a host nation, particularly in one as turbulent as Iraq. Recent events in both Iraq and Afghanistan have made clear the importance of indigenous police forces, or constabularies, to pacification and state-building operations. Effective constabularies can perform the key role of separating insurgents from the population and giving substance and legitimacy to federal and local government. This thesis examines two U.S.-organized paramilitaries: the Philippine Constabulary (1901-1917) and the Haitian Gendarmerie (1916-1934). It argues that in both the Philippines and Haiti, the constabularies became armies, and the instruments of autocratic rule, because American military officers allowed the militarization of the police forces to become institutionalized without also establishing normative constraints on the use of military power. The thesis contends that American military authorities undermined the constabularies’ suitability for enforcing civil law by aggressively developing their military capabilities to meet the challenges of fighting violent insurgencies. Both organizations generalized their pragmatic responses to immediate circumstances without considering the long term implications for them as institutions. The historical experience of the Constabulary and Gendarmerie testify to the real temptation for leaders to stretch an organization beyond its mandate or capabilities by focusing on success and victory over purpose and the ends for which the organization exists.

In this dissertation, I outline a theoretical justification for a new world systems analysis in order to understand economic development and underdevelopment, and stratification systems that emerge within nation states because of their global social location. I present my detailed case for amending Wallerstein's World-Systems Analysis by empirically incorporating the interplay of the military, economy and state as opposed to his primarily economic division of labor that defines the core, periphery and semi periphery. I do this by uncovering the latent structure of militarization and its articulation within the world system controlling for state strength. I also outline the basic profile of my Militarized International System (MIS) model based on an extension of C. Wright Mills' Power Elite (1956) thesis and empirically develop the model using a militarized division of labor. With data on 173 nation states, I validate my model through analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multivariate OLS regression. I also outline a theoretical articulation of class, race and gender stratification in the world system informed by the empirical findings. In the end, I make suggestions for "undoing" stratification to inform movements seeking social justice based upon the world-systemic nature of global stratification, where stratification in its articulation cannot be localized and therefore cannot be "fixed" locally within particular nation states.

Between 1966 and 1986 the Mengo neighborhood of Kampala, the capital of Uganda, was militarized. This dissertation examines how and why the urban dwellers of this neighborhood chose to stay in the city during this period of high insecurity. Successive governments turned several spaces and buildings in the city into army administration headquarters and barracks for soldiers. The army literally moved next door to city residents, leading to constant threats to people’s lives and their property. In order to examine Kampalans’ strategies for surviving in an insecure and dangerous urban environment, this dissertation relies on the oral histories of the men and women who lived through militarization. In so doing, I also examine how the African city of Kampala became resilient amid crisis. I argue that Kampalans relied on a set of practices and stances of defiance and subtle resistance, locally collectively known as Okujeema, to maintain their urban lives; they had inherited these strategies and modified them to suit their new challenges. From the beginning of military rule, many Kampala residents understood that the military meant to push them out of the city as a punishment for their political opposition and allegiance to the Buganda Kingdom. Okujeema is how Kampalans defined resilience and endurance. Residents displayed this trait when they resisted eviction orders, hid their property, and protected each other’s lives. They also insisted on earning a livelihood and enjoying leisure time in the midst of economic collapse. Kampala had long been a city of powerful women, a gender dynamic now challenged by the arriving soldiers. Not surprisingly, Okujeema therefore often took highly gendered forms as when traditional gender roles were inverted and women became protectors of men. All Kampalans, men and women, were urbanites, and they meant to retain that identity. The very notion of living in the city was an act of Okujeema during Kampala’s two decades of militarized crisis. / 2020-11-06T00:00:00Z

This thesis explores women's experiences from participation in armed groups, and their subsequent reintegration into civil society within the Colombian context. The study is based on two months of fieldwork, and nine interviews with female ex-combatants from the FARC, the ELN and the AUC currently enrolled in the reintegration process. Most research focus on women in specific armed groups, and tend to portray women in terms of either empowerment or oppression. This thesis criticizes such tendencies, through the exploration of the complex and gendered processes of de/militarization. The study shows that the women's lives have always - before, during and after their participation in armed groups - been marked by insecurity and exposure to violence. Sporadic incidents of direct physical violence were not always found as most distressing, rather daily stressors including factors like poverty and psychological stress, had larger impact on the women. Further, the women experienced liminality, both as members of an armed group and as participants in the reintegration program, which offered both possibilities and hindrances. In the armed groups established power hierarchies were altered and gendered norms were transgressed, at the same time as the women's reproductive rights were severely constrained. In their quest to become a part of civil society, conforming to conventional femininity became a central strategy for hiding their past. However, the burden of being the primary parent posed challenges for the process of reintegrating.

Women were an integral part to the Easter Rising, yet until recently, their contributions have been forgotten. Those who have been remembered are often women who bucked conservative Irish society’s notions of femininity and chose to actively participate in combat, which has led to a skewed narrative that favors their contributions over the contributions of other women. Historians and scholars favor these narratives because they are empowering and act as clear foils to the heroic narratives of the male leaders in the Easter Rising. In reality, however, most of the women who joined Cumann na mBan or worked for the leaders of the Easter Rising chose to do so knowing they would take on a supportive role. They did so willingly, and even put the cause of Irish independence above the need for women’s rights. Their duties reflected this reality. Once the Easter Rising was underway, women were needed to support the rebels and did so often under fire from British and Irish fighters. For their participation in the rebellion, some women were arrested, while as a whole, the contributions of these women were derided and downplayed by the larger public. Those women not imprisoned would go on to establish the martyr-myth of the heroic and male Irish revolutionaries executed for their part in the Easter Rising. This led to the women’s histories being forgotten or ignored in favor of the heroic narrative. Even when pensions were made available to compensate participants of the Easter Rising, women only applied out of need and for fear of poverty, rather than to receive recognition. To this day, Ireland and Irish history scholars have ignored the participation of gender-conforming women in favor of the more heroic narrative of women whose experiences more closely resemble those of the Easter Rising’s male martyrs.

International sporting events such as the Olympics and FIFA World Cup can affect entire economies, democratic regimes, juridical structures, urban architectures, organizational capacities, and political communities. Whether positively or negatively, undertaking a major sporting event such as the Olympics or FIFA World Cup represents a distinct opportunity for the host-city to embark on the largest ever domestic logistical project ever undertaken within the countries’ borders, which can lead to considerable degrees of short-, medium-, and long-term impacts on a vast array of groups and organizations spanning the public-private divide. Accordingly, the International Olympic Committee has seized on the discourse of legacy to promote and expand the social and political value of infrastructural projects associated with the Games. Over the same period that legacy became a mainstream discourse in the Olympic industry; investment in security, surveillance, and policing infrastructure to protect major sports events simultaneously grew to approximately 20-50% of all expenditures associated with the hosting of an Olympic event. As the discourse of legacy gained currency with Olympic developments, any discourse of security legacies has remained woefully disregarded. Early studies that acknowledge the prevalence of security legacies at major events have focused on event-to-event cases, or have otherwise listed security legacy variables in the absence of any theoretical framework that explains how security governance legacies emerge and endure after the major event has ended. This dissertation presents a robust theoretical framework to address the security governance legacies flowing from the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Through empirical case-studies, it details how such investments in security, surveillance, and policing infrastructure often become institutionalized as security governance assemblages that persist after the major event has ended. In particular, the chapters address legacies of redeployable public video surveillance, public-order policing, civilian-military integration, and the legacies of the private security industry. The security governance legacies of the 2010 Games involves significant changes within security, intelligence, and policing assemblages in Vancouver, and Canada as a whole. The dissertation concludes with a discussion on how security governance assemblages from the Vancouver 2010 Olympics might further inform notions of function-creep in the surveillance studies literature. / Graduate / 0615 / 0627

International sporting events such as the Olympics and FIFA World Cup can affect entire economies, democratic regimes, juridical structures, urban architectures, organizational capacities, and political communities. Whether positively or negatively, undertaking a major sporting event such as the Olympics or FIFA World Cup represents a distinct opportunity for the host-city to embark on the largest ever domestic logistical project ever undertaken within the countries’ borders, which can lead to considerable degrees of short-, medium-, and long-term impacts on a vast array of groups and organizations spanning the public-private divide. Accordingly, the International Olympic Committee has seized on the discourse of legacy to promote and expand the social and political value of infrastructural projects associated with the Games. Over the same period that legacy became a mainstream discourse in the Olympic industry; investment in security, surveillance, and policing infrastructure to protect major sports events simultaneously grew to approximately 20-50% of all expenditures associated with the hosting of an Olympic event. As the discourse of legacy gained currency with Olympic developments, any discourse of security legacies has remained woefully disregarded. Early studies that acknowledge the prevalence of security legacies at major events have focused on event-to-event cases, or have otherwise listed security legacy variables in the absence of any theoretical framework that explains how security governance legacies emerge and endure after the major event has ended. This dissertation presents a robust theoretical framework to address the security governance legacies flowing from the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Through empirical case-studies, it details how such investments in security, surveillance, and policing infrastructure often become institutionalized as security governance assemblages that persist after the major event has ended. In particular, the chapters address legacies of redeployable public video surveillance, public-order policing, civilian-military integration, and the legacies of the private security industry. The security governance legacies of the 2010 Games involves significant changes within security, intelligence, and policing assemblages in Vancouver, and Canada as a whole. The dissertation concludes with a discussion on how security governance assemblages from the Vancouver 2010 Olympics might further inform notions of function-creep in the surveillance studies literature. / Graduate / 0615 / 0627