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- Convenors:
-
Servane Roupnel
(Université Laval)
Lea Ruelle Wargnier (University Lyon 2)
Eric Doidy (INRAE)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Politics and Power
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 22 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
The rules - explicit norms imposed and recognized within a group - are particularly restrictive in military circles. This panel addresses the issue of transgression through the military experience: identity tension, local-global scales, trauma, environmental relations, etc.
Long Abstract:
The rules - as explicit norms imposed and recognized within a group - are particularly restrictive in military circles. They are embodied both in the military body (individual) and in the military corps (collective); they mark the soldier's identity as well as military culture. This contextualized redistribution of the relationship to the world through discipline and power helps to contain certain forms of violence and offer resilience factors. In fact, if the military world offers certain resources (fraternity, the esprit de corps, etc.), these compositions also require personal accommodations in relation to the military order or readjustments of the rules. As a result - violence making situations more and more unstable - certain points of rupture nevertheless occur and lead to transgression.
Social sciences provide tools (ethnography, narratives) that allow us to better understand what individuals and groups experience in such situations. Whether it is identity tensions, local-global scales (civil-military relations with inter-arms nuances), trauma or the relationship to the environment, reflection through rules or transgression opens perspectives and challenges of current reflections.
Our panel is open to international researchers working on those issues - from all disciplinary backgrounds - for any army (conscription or not) and for any impact specific to the profession of soldier.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 22 June, 2021, -Servane Roupnel (Université Laval)
Paper short abstract:
Canada is marked by linguistic duality, reflected both in the construction of its army and in its support. This communication will look at the induced rules of the military subculture and Quebec society, discussing the place of post-traumatized veterans in a society that reject military support.
Paper long abstract:
Canada is a country marked by linguistic duality between francophones and anglophones. This reality divides Canada into two entities that are distinguished in part by their fervor for the military institution. While English-speaking Canada seems to support the defenders of the nation, francophones, and more specifically Quebecers, offer a resistance that has been historically apparent since the First World War.
Every year, however, French-speaking soldiers join the armed forces, leaving their culture of origin to integrate into a military professional subculture. Often from an early age, they join a collective marked by the values of strength and courage. New rules are imposed on them as tools to deal with the violence of the fighting. However, flaws appear, and many soldiers return traumatized from their missions. No longer in line with the expectations of the armed forces, they are then demobilized, pushed towards a reintegration into civilian life.
But then how do these soldiers, bearing the scars of war, reintegrate into a society rejecting the armed forces and its representatives? How does post-traumatic stress violate the induced rules of the military institution and civil society? What is the place of this tension for French-Canadian civilians who operate around post-traumatized soldiers?
This communication opens the reflection to these questions thanks to the ethnographic data collected as part of my doctoral research in anthropology. We will draw on the testimonies of various actors dealing with PTSD to highlight various paradoxes that, each in their own way, break culturally induced rules.
Lea Ruelle Wargnier (University Lyon 2)
Paper short abstract:
Rearranging the rules also means changing the possibilities of transgressions. In this proposal it will be a question of thinking about what the relationship to risk in the army engenders about the relationship to rules. We will see that these arrangements protect the mental health of the military.
Paper long abstract:
After an ethnography in combat company, the results show that the relationship to risk is no longer the same as that of their culture of origin. As the training progresses, the behaviours that are usually considered dangerous because they generate a risk of death see their status change. Risk no longer appears to be a parameter for considering the probability of death or injury. Rather, risk seems to be a concept that depends on the origin of the movement. If the soldier is the origin of the action: no risk is identified. If the soldier is the one towards whom the action is directed: a risk appears. Consequently, actions that are for survival or that cause the death of others fall back into a kind of norm which is specific to the group and the risk comes from the Other. It seems that this alternative relationship to risk protects them (especially mentally) and this is what I propose to discuss in this paper.
It will be a question of presenting my ethnography and thinking about the construction of this concept that is risk. Then the different definitions of risk will be considered and the ways in which they protect or make vulnerable will be discussed. Finally, the limits and benefits of this conception of risk to the military - for their mental health - will be exposed.
Eric Doidy (INRAE)
Paper short abstract:
This paper shows how U.S. war veterans with PTSD find their way back to civilian and civic life through a combination of transgression of the military as an institution and reappropriation of their own military experience and resources.
Paper long abstract:
Military U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan not only caused many post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) cases among the troops, but they also represented an occasion in which individuals questioned the justification of their action and expressed mistrust in the military institution. Getting back to civilian life was uneasy for some veterans, not only because of the PTSD in itself, but also because they refused social categorizations labelling them as “heroes” or “victims”. This paper examines how these veterans find their way getting back to civilian and civic life through a combination of transgression of the military as an institution and reappropriation of one’s own military experience and resources. This paper is based on an ethnographic investigation of a movement founded in the mid-2000’s by a group of organic farmers who took part in the anti-war protest, which helps war veterans with PTSD to start a career in agriculture (with the idea that farming can be part of a healing process for them).