Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how temporalities are structured and experienced by recruits in military service, based on my doctoral project about the reactivation of military conscription in Sweden. I will especially focus on how time is used and embodied as a disciplining tool.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores temporalities as experienced in military service, based on my doctoral project about the reactivation of military conscription in Sweden. Military service is no longer based on voluntarily engagement, instead young adults are summoned to do basic training and not able to choose or quit training according to their liking ("free will"). In the project, I investigate how these young adults understand this shift from voluntarism to conscription and especially their encounter with "hard values" such as obligation and obedience during the military training.

This paper focus on the various ways that time and temporality are structured by the military officers and experienced by the young recruits in the military setting.  

The question of practiced time is at heart of the military experience. In the everyday life for recruits, time is structured in a particular way which also is closely related to strategies for discipline. Officers telling the young recruits "you have three minutes to make your bed!" is one example of how time becomes organized in a rather different way from a more self-regulating form of time practice, that is common in many schools and homes. The paper will especially focus on how time is used and experienced (embodied) as a disciplining tool. Furthermore, in terms of temporality, the military experience can be characterized as "out-of-time" in relation to a temporality "at home", why I also explore whether this embodied military temporality is "brought back" and negotiated into everyday life at home.