The “mailed fist” and the “velvet glove”: A hermeneutic phenomenological study of Canadian soldiers’ roles and identity in peace support operations
| dc.contributor.author | Creary, Patlee | |
| dc.contributor.examiningcommittee | Flaherty, Maureen (Peace and Conflict Studies) Lutfiyya, Zana (Education) Boulden, Jane (Royal Military College) | en_US |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Byrne, Sean (Peace and Conflict Studies) | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2018-04-24T14:05:35Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2018-04-24T14:05:35Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2017 | |
| dc.date.submitted | 2018-03-19T18:17:27Z | en |
| dc.date.submitted | 2018-04-23T18:53:37Z | en |
| dc.degree.discipline | Peace and Conflict Studies | en_US |
| dc.degree.level | Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | This study makes an original contribution to the peace and conflict studies literature by examining Canadian military experiences with peace builder roles. The goal of the research is to understand if, and how, Canadian soldiers transition from trained warrior to expected peace builder in international peace operations deployments. I use peace agency, third side roles, and citizen empowerment as well as ideas about ontological agency, military transmutation and cultural inversion to create a comprehensive conceptual framework for understanding the experiences of twelve former Canadian soldiers. The soldiers were deployed to international peace support missions in the former Yugoslavia, the Balkans, and Afghanistan between 1990 and 2014. Using hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry, I highlight the Canadian soldiers’ spatial, temporal, material, corporeal, and relational experiences of encounters with a peace support role, military identity, and the concept of peace in international peace support deployments. In addition to uncovering new understandings of soldiers’ experiences in peace operations, the research shows that informal peace builder roles, creating a safe space, and engaging in micro-level contact with the local lived other are relevant aspects of these soldiers’ encounters with peace. The findings of this research have implications for the way that practitioners and researchers think about peace operations, military-other contact, and intervener neutrality. In addition to identifying areas for further investigation based on the new understandings, the study highlights the importance of validating informal third side roles for soldiers in international peace operations. | en_US |
| dc.description.note | May 2018 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1993/32996 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | en_US |
| dc.rights | open access | en_US |
| dc.subject | Canadian soldiers | en_US |
| dc.subject | peace operations | en_US |
| dc.subject | peacebuilding | en_US |
| dc.subject | peace builder | en_US |
| dc.subject | phenomenology | en_US |
| dc.title | The “mailed fist” and the “velvet glove”: A hermeneutic phenomenological study of Canadian soldiers’ roles and identity in peace support operations | en_US |
| dc.type | doctoral thesis | en_US |