Unconventional Combat

In recent decades, there has been a generational shift of the US veterans' peace movement, from one grounded mostly in the experiences of older white men of the Vietnam War era, to one informed by a young, diverse cohort of post-9/11 veterans. In Unconventional Combat, Michael A. Messner
traces this transformation through the life-history interviews of six veterans of color to show how their experiences of sexual and gender harassment, sexual assault, racist and homophobic abuse during their military service has shaped their political views and action. Drawing upon participant
observation with the Veterans For Peace and About Face organizations and interviews with older male veterans as his backdrop, Messner shows how veterans' military experiences form their collective "situated knowledge" of intersecting oppressions. This knowledge, Messner argues, further shapes their
intersectional praxis, which promises to transform the veterans' peace movement and potentially link their anti-militarist work with other movement groups working for change. As intersectionality has increasingly become central to the conversation on social movements, Unconventional Combat is not
only a story about the US veterans' peace movement, but it also offers broad relevance to the larger world of social justice activism.

"Unconventional Combat illuminates the current generational transformation of the U.S. veterans' peace movement, from one grounded mostly in the experiences of older, White men of the Vietnam War era, to one increasingly driven by a younger and much more diverse cohort of "Post 9/11" veterans. Participant observation with two organizations (Veterans For Peace, and About Face) and interviews with older men veterans form the backdrop for the book's main focus, life-history interviews with six younger veterans-all people of color, four of them women, one a Native Two-Spirit person, four of whom identify as queer. The book traces these veterans' experiences of sexual and gender harassment, sexual assault, racist and homophobic abuse during their military service (some of it in combat zones), centering on their collective "situated knowledge" of intersecting oppressions. As veterans, this knowledge shapes their intersectional praxis, which promises to transform the veterans' peace movement, and also holds the potential to provide a connective language through which veterans' anti-militarism work organically links them with movement groups working on racial justice, stopping gender and sexual violence, addressing climate change, and building national and international anti-colonial coalitions. This promise is sometimes thwarted by older veterans, whose activism includes a commitment to "diversity" that often falls short of creating and maintaining organizational space for full inclusion of previously marginalized "others." Intersectionality has increasingly become the analytic coin of today's emergent movement field, and the connective tissue of a growing coalitional politics. The younger, diverse group of veterans I focus on in this book are part of this larger shift in the social movement ecology, and they contribute a critical understanding of war and militarism to progressive coalitions"--

"Veterans of any war in any country are intersectionally gendered. Michael Messner has listened carefully to 6 American recent veterans whose experiences and ideas are rarely heard. He has thus drawn back the curtain both on today's US military's misogynist and racialized culture and on older white
male veteran peace activists' difficulty in grasping its implications for them. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time." -- Cynthia Enloe, author of Nimo's War, Emma's War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War

"Michael Messner does a beautiful job of thinking deeply about the interconnectedness of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and social class as they affect the standpoint and experiences of young activists. His book offers something really substantial to the study of intersectionality and social
movements, and it's a wonderful contribution to these fields of study." -- Mignon R. Moore, Columbia University

"A groundbreaking analysis of veterans and the peace movement, Messner focuses on a young generation outside of the heterosexual, white male norm in the military. Told through compelling narratives and an intersectional lens, this is an important book for anyone interested in the complications of
serving in the military and then coming to seek an end to war." -- Jo Reger, Professor of Sociology, Oakland University