What is Armed Comfort?

This article introduces Armed Comfort as a distinct mode of militarized governance through which armed authority is affectively normalized in everyday civilian life. It asks why visible militarization to some is so often experienced as reassuring rather than threatening. While critical military studies have richly examined militarization through fear, coercion, surveillance, ideology, and other enriching dimensions; this article foregrounds ‘affect’ as a mechanism through which militarized power endures. This article makes three interventions. First, building upon Feminist and Critical Military Studies’ analyzes of everyday militarization, it foregrounds ‘comfort’ as a specific affective mechanism of governance through which militarized authority is normalized in civilian life. Second, it develops the concept of armed comfort and identifies its key features. Third, it demonstrates how ‘comfort’ operates as a political technology that stabilizes militarized governance in civilian life. Lastly, it engages with the ambiguities that surround this concept. The article is primarily conceptual, drawing on repeated everyday encounters in Indian public infrastructure as illustrative sites rather than formal ethnographic cases. By theorizing reassurance as politically productive, the article extends critical military studies’ engagement with everyday militarization and its affective foundations.