The social organization of soldiering : a Canadian infantry company in the field

• Main Author: Irwin, Anne Lucille
• Published: University of Manchester 2002
• Subjects: 355.109971
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.664469

Based on fieldwork with a Canadian infantry battalion, this thesis examines what it means to be a soldier in a peacetime army, incorporating ethnomethodological principles in the analysis. Questioning the assumption that there is a social entity termed the army which exists as something prior to and separate from those who belong to it, I argue that the military and soldiers constitute each other in a reflexive fashion. Soldiers are constructed as soldiers through the practices of soldiering, which are informed by discourses produced by the military and by the public at large. Soldiers' identities as soldiers rely on claims to soldierhood which are embedded in networks of social relationships and in practical activity. In order for claims to soldierhood to have any validity at all, they must be based on experience, and not simply any experience, but shared experience in the field. Yet the field as a site of valid, shared experience is itself constructed by those who make claims to soldierhood. In a circular fashion, the field is defined by the shared experiences which take place in it and the shared field experience is defined by the context in which it occurs. Shared field experience is validated by soldiers' narrative practices of storytelling and complaining, and by the institutional practices of surveillance, report- making, and performance evaluation. In this way, the military as an institution is continuously under construction by those who serve in it, while their identities as soldiers are constantly renewed and refreshed by the activity of soldiering. This thesis makes a contribution to the small but growing body of anthropological research devoted to studying armed forces, and to the larger body of work which examines how social order is managed as an accomplishment by members of society. In this thesis I evaluate the potential for including ethnomethodological principles in the ethnographic endeavour, and conclude that although there are severe limitations to what ethnomethodology can offer anthropologists, some of its methods may be useful and revealing.