In February 2025, the 7th Invictus game was held in Vancouver Whistler, Canada. Founded by Prince Harry in 2014 The game is an international adaptive sport event It aims to “inspire recovery, support rehabilitation, and create a wider understanding and respect for those who serve our country.” The 2025 event gathered about 550 wounded soldiers and veteran participants in 25 countries that competed in 11 adaptive sports, including alpine skiing, wheelchair rugby, wheelchair basketball and swimming.
In 2017, I attended Toronto Invictus Games. At that time, my research focused on the ‘positive’ of service members and veterans. It influenced the relationship between military life and militaryism. In extensively, militaryism can be understood as “STAVRIANAKIS and SELBY 2013: 3” (STAVRIANAKIS and SELBY 2013: 3) “organized political violence, and can be considered as the structure and logic of world politics. But while attending the game, I was shocked by the centrality of the military family, the dominant story of the competition itself, the recovery and rehabilitation. The ‘military family’ that I bring here is sometimes not a wider military family mentioned from the perspective of the ‘warrior brothers’ or a wider military community, but rather a more literal understanding of this term, a heterogeneous norm and a nuclear (military) family structure.
I read my research travel notes and mention the description of the military family at the opening ceremony of the event. In the ‘military wife’ and ‘army’ t -shirt worn by the participant family; In accordance with the news of the participant’s partner to give birth; And on repetitive mantra that The whole family to serve. The latter feelings were shared by many participants I mentioned. Most people have identified their immediate family (spouses or parents) as the most important support systems in their lives.
It is not surprising in many ways to identify a family with an important support system. Although it has been historically overlooked by both military and the state regarding the importance of military preparation and war, the military family is now looking forward to increasingly through various ‘family preparation’ policies. ‘Loose pickup’ When transformed from the military in connection with the Veterans, or fulfills the needs of treatment of service members and veterans who are physically or mentally injured (Inter Alia Howell 2015; WOOL 2015). In this regard, it is drawing rich scholarships of feminist political economists (Inter Alia Picchio 1992; Elson 1998; Bakker 2007) -The dependence on the military on the current and previous members can understand the dependence as an expansion of dependence on families and families in a capitalist state.
But in the context of the participant family of Invictus Games, what is needed is often more exponentially more exponentially than civilians or soldiers (not injured). Justice, the participants who participate in the game have experienced any form of physical or mental injury. Such injuries could be relatively ‘light’, but some participants have experienced chronic, serious and complex physical and mental injuries, including limb loss, paralysis loss, post -traumatic stress and traumatic brain damage while completely restoring the individual’s previous physical and/or mental health. Such injuries may require lifelong treatment with certain requirements and demands of treatment as both injured age and family care age. Medical anthropologist ZoE H. WOOL mentioned the predictions and open nursing care of the military family as follows. Work for life after war . In another way, for military families who deal with serious and chronic injuries, this is not a short -term ‘bump’ in the acute period of other soft life, serious pain, labor, time and investment. Rather, it has a radical and permanent direction for the injured and caregivers.
In addition to the emotional experiences and emotional relationships of the service members and veteran participants, I not only consider the experiences of military families, especially military caregivers, but I learned more and more that the whole family was worn out and weakened by the demands of military life, not just the entire family. Some work drunk in the aftermath of the injury of a loved one in a dialogue with a military caregiver furthermore The ‘regular’ domestic labor and childcare include: Attendance of medical promises; Take any drug and track it at any time. In light of the changing body and mobility of the injured family, we organize and manage the adjustment of furniture to ensure safety and livelihoods. Negotiations with documents, administrative and classes for bureaucratic classes for some forms of disability assistance of the state or veterans’ association; And I have what Kathleen Lynch mentioned “24 -hour nursing guidance” This is necessary for the reproduction of every day. As a wife of Invictus game participants, I simply said that I was “tired.”
Neither of the above does not affect the brilliant moments of ‘damage point’ or ‘falling’, but indicates that it is overwhelmingly wearing and wearing in an overwhelmingly feminine body that continues to live in the background of insufficient support or welfare programs in military or state. At the same time, however, as all the participants I mentioned surrounded the military experience, regardless of the damage they had experienced through the service, he explained that none of the military caregivers did not pay or explicitly harm negative attention. Pretty – And as others pointed out -The labor related to caring for and supporting injured volunteer members or veterans was willing to be drunk and performed. love.
Moreover, caring acts also provided vectors on ‘positive’ influence and sustainable experience, including joy, achievement and solidarity. As the wife of a participant told me, it was the official role of the ‘caregiver’ in relation to the Invictus game that met her partner, lived in the life of adaptive sports, and met people, and participated in the support network. This flooding and her relationship with it improved her life while exhausting and depletion of her.
It was a simultaneous experience of harmful, exhaustion, pleasure, and joy that it was experienced by military and veterans in relation to military life. and Maintaining and supplementing them. What is the importance of these two contradictory experiences for military care? Why do you think it is important to consider it?
The simplestly, not only the military family, especially the military wife and mother, as well as the work of caring/domestic/emotional (domestic/emotional) damage The work of this labor is a structure of world politics, providing another example of how war and military costs are seeped and spread through the community and the society. If you want to dismantle military power and those who want to support it, if you are less simple and perhaps a military caregiver, you should consider their joy and pleasure. Military caregivers express not only fatigue and frustration but also feelings of achievement, joy and solidarity. In this respect, the soldiers and caregivers are only soldiers who emotionally invest in militaryism and affect intimate relationships. It is necessary to recognize that many individuals have emotional and emotional attachment to militaryism, as well as inconvenient for those who are organized or unhappy according to the violent logic of military power, and that militaryism itself provides continuous data and non -material support for individuals and communities. I no longer think that I can imagine militaryism and work for the world. Who You will experience each of them.
memo
The article wrote a book titled by the recently completed Edinburgh University Press. The pleasure and depletion of modern militaryism.
reference
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Basham, Victoria M. and Sergio Catignani (2018), ‘The house is where the stove is. International Feminist Political Journal20 (2): pp. 153-71
Chisholm, Amanda and Hanna Ketola (2020), ‘Brutal optimism of militaryism: feminist curiosity, influence and world security’, International political sociology14 (3): pp. 270-85
Elson, Diane (1998), ‘Economy, Politics and Domestic: Company, State and Furniture of Production Organization,’ New political economy3 (2): pp. 189-208
Gray, Harriet (2022), ‘The Power of Love: The Power of Love Closes the space for the criticism of militaryism in the autobiography of the British military wife,’ Important military researchDoi: 10.1080/23337486.2022.2033915
Howell, Alison (2015), ‘Creating War Works: Western military regeneration, emotional health and emotional economy’ Linda åhäll and Thomas Gregory (EDS), Emotion, politics and warAbingdon: routledge, pp. 141-53
Lynch, Kathleen (2007), ‘I love labor as a form of nursing labor in the form of unique and indescribable forms of nursing.’ Sociological review55 (3): pp. 550-570
Picchio, A. (1992), Social reproduction: political economy in the labor marketCambridge: Cambridge University Press
Stavrianakis, Anna and Jan Selby (2013) Militaryism and international relations: political economy, security, theory, Abingdon: routledge, pp. 3-18
WOOL, ZOE H. (2019), Catherine Lutz and Andrea Mazzarino (EDS) ‘Afterwalk for Life’, War and Health: Medical results of Iraq and Afghanistan WarNew York: New York University Press, 210-30
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