This article explores our experiences of conducting feminist interpretive research on the British Army Reserves. The project, which examined the everyday work-Army-life balance challenges that reservists face, and the roles of their partners/spouses in enabling them to fulfil their military commitments, is an example of a potential contribution to the so-called ‘knowledge economy’, where publicly funded research has come to be seen as ‘functional’ for political, military, economic, and social advancement. As feminist interpretive researchers examining an institution that prizes masculinist and functionalist methodologies, instrumentalised knowledge production, and highly formalised ethics approval processes, we faced multiple challenges to how we were able to conduct our research, who we were able to access, and what we were able to say. We show how military assumptions about what constitutes proper ‘research’, bolstered by knowledge economy logics, reinforces gendered power relationships that keep hidden the significant roles women (in our case, the partners/spouses of reservists) play in state security. Accordingly, we argue that the functionalist and masculinist logics interpretive researchers face in the age of the knowledge economy help more in sustaining orthodox modes of knowledge production about militaries and security, and in reinforcing gendered power relations, than they do in advancing knowledge.

中文翻译：

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“知识经济”时代军事政策研究的性别政治

本文探讨了我们对英国陆军预备役进行女权主义解释研究的经验。该项目研究了预备役军人面临的日常工作-军队-生活平衡挑战，以及他们的伴侣/配偶在使他们能够履行军事承诺方面的作用，是对所谓的“知识经济”的潜在贡献的一个例子'，公共资助的研究已被视为对政治、军事、经济和社会进步具有“功能性”。作为女权主义解释研究人员，我们正在研究一个奖励男性主义和功能主义方法论、工具化知识生产和高度正式的伦理批准程序的机构，我们在如何进行研究、我们能够接触到谁以及我们是什么方面面临着多重挑战能说。我们展示了在知识经济逻辑的支持下，关于什么构成适当“研究”的军事假设如何加强性别权力关系，这种关系隐藏了女性（在我们的案例中，是预备役军人的伴侣/配偶）在国家安全中扮演的重要角色。因此，我们认为，解释研究人员在知识经济时代面临的功能主义和男性主义逻辑在维持关于军事和安全的正统知识生产模式以及加强性别权力关系方面比在促进知识方面更有帮助。