“Everyone knows this or that married man is banging the booth babe”: Military business culture and gendered circuits of violence and capital

As Europe ‘rearms’ and military budgets bloat across the continent at the expense of public and planetary services – who are we investing in ‘to preserve peace’? In this talk, I share reflections from an ethnographic deep-dive into eight globally relevant yet NATO-oriented military trade shows (2023-2026). Documenting the material, social and power relations constitutive of the community tasked with delivering Europe’s ‘defence readiness,’ I interrogate the settings and logics that underlie the production of military-industrial (man)power. Military trade shows are central nodes in the global circulation of violence and capital and the ‘military business culture’ found therein is telling of the gendered and racialised relations and rationalities through which armed violence – its production, practice and profiteering – is legitimised, normalised and glorified. In this space, money, men and martiality rule; here, the ideal-type warrior mixes and merges with the ideal-type businessman, producing a White hypermasculinity at once set on physical, social, technological and monetary dominance. Writing up the embodied knowledge of both researcher and research subjects, I aim to deepen our empirical and conceptual understanding for how wo/men, war, weapons, wealth and Whiteness are made in relation to each other at great costs for human and planetary wellbeing.

Nico Edwards is a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the War & Geos project (Newcastle University) working across critical military studies, political geography, and feminist and ethnographic methods to map and disrupt military supply chains. Her award-winning work on green militarism and the gendered power politics of the global arms trade appears widely in non/academic outlets. Nico is also a Board Director with Scientists for Global Responsibility, listed Expert with Forum on the Arms Trade, and Co-Founder of the annual Global Week of Action for Peace and Climate Justice.

Moderated by Dr. Benjamin Klasche, Associate Professor of IR and Co-Director of the CEEShub