This dissertation investigates the various levels at which the multi-scaled dynamics of war take shape in the everyday, embodied lives of the people whose job it is to produce it—soldiers and their families and communities at and around Ft. Hood, in central Texas. As the largest military installation in the world and the single biggest point of deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan for all U.S. forces, Ft. Hood and its surround may represent the greatest single concentration of Americans directly involved in the production of global military force outside of Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. The repercussions of war and routinized war-making extend throughout the lives of the people who inhabit, serve and surround the base. The length, scale and distinct character of the Iraq War have exposed these soldiers and their family members to new and chronic hardships and forms of vulnerability, including the stresses of longer and more frequent tours, unprecedented rates of posttraumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, overburdened institutional supports, and an abundance of extreme characterizations of soldiers in American public culture. These vulnerabilities are bodily and affective, intersubjective and shared, and bases for scrutiny and recognition. I base my analysis on the difficult and distinctive role that the soldier occupies as at once the agent, instrument and object of state violence. The soldier’s life is simultaneously shaped by discipline, empowered by the right to kill, and allowed to be exposed to harm and death. I use soldiers’ “exceptional” status as a starting point for understanding the dense sets of material, institutional, discursive, and social relations in which they are embedded. The dissertation chapters are organized around broad themes that emerged from my informants’ words, actions and experiences and that capture the impacts of war across diverse arenas of everyday life. I treat each theme as a field within which to explore not merely the effects of war, but its lived affects—-the “feelings” of war that are the variously sensory, psychic and emotional imprints of the everyday, organized production of military violence. / text

Within the United States Army, it is estimated that as many as 10,000 soldiers are Muslim. However, in 2008, only 3,086 active duty personnel self-identified as Muslim. Following the attacks of September 11 and more recently, the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, there has been a marked shift in the general public’s perception toward Muslim citizens, and for American soldiers whom are Muslim; they have been placed in incredibly difficult circumstances. In this report, I aim to document the experiences of soldiers who are Muslim within the U.S. Armed Forces, and report on their struggles, successes and lives, in an era when Islamic terrorist and extremist groups are considered to be the United States nemesis. A vast majority of soldiers never encounter prejudice or experience religious or ethnic discrimination, but some do. And for soldiers who face prejudice in the military based on their religion or ethnicity, there is often little internal protection available from the higher chain of command. The problem may be relatively small in scope with regard to the number of soldiers affected on a daily basis, but fundamentally important constitutional rights are at stake in these cases of institutional lack of protection / text