Greenham Revisited: Researching Myself and My Sisters

Abstract

Abstract When, along with 30 000 other women, I first visited the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common in December 1982, I had no idea that a year later I would be living there, let alone that six years on I’d be writing a Ph.D. thesis about the place. A 16-year-old sixth former, I knew that something momentous was afoot and that I wanted to be part of it, but I certainly could not articulate the importance of what was happening outside that United States Air Force base in Berkshire. So it was that my doctoral thesis set out to explore the sociological significance of Greenham on both a micro level, to the tens of thousands whose lives were changed by the experience of involvement, and on a macro-level, to the social structures and institutions of a hetero-patriarchal society.