Armed Forces & Society

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Reserve Soldiers as Transmigrants : Moving between the Civilian and Military Worlds Edna Lomsky-Feder, Nir Gazit and Eyal Ben-Ari Armed Forces & Society 2008 34: 593 originally published online 18 January 2008 DOI: 10.1177/0095327X07312090 The online version of this article can be found at: http://afs.sagepub.com/content/34/4/593

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Reserve Soldiers as Transmigrants

Armed Forces & Society Volume 34 Number 4 July 2008 593-614 © 2008 Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society. All rights reserved. 10.1177/0095327X07312090 http://afs.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

Moving between the Civilian and Military Worlds Edna Lomsky-Feder Nir Gazit Eyal Ben-Ari The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

This article suggests a new perspective for examining the particular social and organizational characteristics of military reserves forces and the special experiences of serving in the reserves. To illustrate the unique social position of reservists, the authors develop a theoretical model that likens them to transmigrants. Accordingly, the authors suggest that society may benefit from looking at reserves both as sorts of social and organizational hybrids or amalgams—they are soldiers and civilians, they are outside yet inside the military system, and are invested in both spheres—and as continual migrants journeying between military and civilian spheres. The authors end by suggesting that it may be fruitful to study three segments of the military, each of which has its own dynamics: regulars, conscripts, and reserves. This differentiation allows society to examine different patterns of motivation, cohesion, political commitment and awareness, and long-term considerations that characterize each segment. Keywords:

Reserves; Reserve Service; transmigrants; civil–military relations

I

n an article published a decade and a half ago in Armed Forces & Society, Walker observed that reserve forces “are an enigma, a puzzle that has confounded military leaders for decades.”1 Integrating and synthesizing previous scholarly work, in this article we suggest a reconceptualization of the particular social and organizational characteristics of military reserve forces and the special experiences of serving in the reserves. Through offering a new theoretical framework for understanding such forces and their experiences, we hope to shed light on the enigma that Walker refers to. In Authors’ Note: We thank the participants at a workshop on “The Military and Reserve Soldiers” held at the Hebrew University in March 2002; the NATO ARW on Systemic Comparison of Professional and Conscript Forces held in Bratislava, December 2003; Professor Patricia Shields, the editor of Armed Forces & Society; and two anonymous reviewers for very useful comments and discussions pertaining to this article. 593 Downloaded from afs.sagepub.com at Ruppin Institute on September 13, 2012

594 Armed Forces & Society

a previous article, we reviewed the scholarly literature on reserve forces and proposed that the peculiar incongruent character of such units lies in their being betwixt and between the military and civilian sectors of a society.2 In this article, we develop a more complex theoretical model of reserve forces and the experience of being in the reserves by likening reservists to transmigrants. Our reasoning is that while conceptualizing reserve forces as being betwixt and between the civilian and military worlds underscores their structural duality, the picture taken from the world of migration introduces a much more dynamic and processual emphasis to this structural characterization. The advantage of such a conceptualization thus lies in illuminating how reserves constantly “travel,” mediate, and sometimes create critical perspectives between the army and wider civilian society. As such, reserves reflect changing approaches toward the military in wider society, express attitudes to military service that are different from those of conscripts or regulars, and carry special resources that other military groups do not have. Accordingly, we suggest that we may benefit from looking at reserves both as sorts of social and organizational amalgams— they are soldiers and civilians, they are outside yet inside the military system, and are invested in both spheres—and as continual migrants journeying between military and civilian spheres. Moreover, by moving between these two worlds, reservists are mediums for a constant flow of ideas, identities, and social links between them. Let us trace out our theoretical position to frame a basis for the rest of that analysis. In an essay written thirty years ago, Willet described a major structural tension characterizing the relations between the regular (or active) military and its reserve forces.3 Using a functionalist framework, he suggested that such forces as the Militia in Canada, the Territorial Army in Britain, or the National Guard in the United States are integrated as organizations with both the military and civilian sectors of a given society. Some fifteen years later, using data primarily related to the United States, Walker underscored the peculiar dilemmas of using reservists for military missions because of their unique position within the military and outside of it. While not explicitly stated as such, their arguments imply that as individuals, reservists are simultaneously civilians and soldiers, and that reserve forces take on features of both military and civilian organizations. While these insights are crucial for understanding the nature of reserve forces, they are essentially static. In this article, we therefore add a dynamic or processual dimension to the analysis. Theoretically, we proceed from earlier work carried out by two Israeli scholars. Lissak and Horowitz proposed that the character of the armed forces could be understood in terms of the kinds of “permeable boundaries” that exist between it and the state and various social groups within civil society, allowing the wider social system to continue functioning under conditions of stress and strain.4 The concept of permeable boundaries led Lissak and Horowitz to focus on those areas or sites of friction, interaction, and linkages between actors within and outside of the military and on the mutual influence and “dilution” of the more extreme orientations of both spheres. But because the overwhelming stress within this approach was on institutions and on


Lomsky-Feder et al. / Reserve Soldiers as Transmigrants 595

elites, little was said (or asked) about the potential for rupture, critique, and resistance potentiated by permeable boundaries. While they did, along the functionalist lines suggested by Willet and Walker, indicate that reserve forces could operate as a social mechanism mediating the civil and military spheres, they did not carry out a systematic study of the reserves as a unique social and organizational institution. Furthermore, while they focused on institutions and elites, we go on to examine the structural movement of groups and social actors between the two spheres and the subjective experiences of individuals—the reservists—moving between these worlds. What we suggest is that it is precisely within those zones of friction and interaction between the military and civilian parts of society that the structural fluidity, potential for conflict, and processual nature of reserve forces can best be understood. To be clear, while our analysis is also rooted in the structural position of reservists, our perspective is much more processual that the one proposed by scholars in the past: we stress the constant movement of reservists between the two spheres, the interrelationships between different agents in these spheres, and we focus on the practices that are used by reservists and those actors they come into interaction with. In other words, our perspective allows us to explore reserve forces not only in terms of organizational structures and social arrangements, but as being part of a dynamic field of action within which reservists negotiate various issues with the military. We begin by sketching out the assumptions and guiding questions in previous research about reserve forces. We then go on to explore four sets of concerns: the conceptualization of reserves soldiers as transmigrants who move between two worlds; the kinds of tensions and negotiations that develop between regulars and reserves; the implicit or “psychological contract” struck between reservists and the military; and, using the case of Israel, the distinctive organizational and cultural dynamics characterizing reserve service. Our data is based on secondary sources and cases related to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the U.S. military, the armed forces of Western Europe, and (occasionally) the military institutions of the democracies of East Asia. Even though these diverse militaries are different from each other in scale, features, goals, and experience in actual conflicts, our aim in placing them together is theoretical: to clarify the special character of reserves in contrast to conscripts or regulars.

The Scholarly Study of the Reserves: Assumptions and Guiding Questions By reserves we refer to the forces that during routine times stand outside the regular military organizational system but can be relatively easily mobilized in times of emergency. The mobilization of reserves is rather rapid because, unlike conscripts, they have already been trained and thus do not need long periods of time to reach a level suitable for deployment. Reserves have existed in a variety of forms for the past few hundreds of years with the most notable examples being civil militias.5 At the



conclusion of the cold war, many countries decided to downsize their armed forces, including their reserve components.6 Downsizing was reinforced by demands for cuts in security budgets, technological developments in war fighting necessitating different training and skills on the part of soldiers, and the engagement of troops in nontraditional military missions (such as peacekeeping or humanitarian operations).7 At the same time, reserve forces continue to exist around the world, and in many cases represent extensive fractions of a given country’s total military strength. Thus, for example, in the United States, reserves make up 47 percent of the total force, run to about 1.3 million men and women, and are considered an integral part of the country’s strategic forces.8 They also make up some 40 percent of the American forces deployed in Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom) and about one-quarter of the American dead soldiers in Afghanistan.9 In Britain, the reserve component has actually grown somewhat in the past decade or so to 320,000 soldiers making up about 52 percent of the nation’s total force, and is also considered an integral part of the country’s defense planning.10 In Germany, the end of the cold war brought about a dramatic decrease of 50 percent in the reserve force and today it encompasses about 390,000 persons.11 In ways similar to the case of Switzerland, from their beginnings the reserves in Israel were conceived of not as simple auxiliary forces tasked with secondary tasks, but rather as full-fledged units and the only way that Israel as a small nation could offset the demographic imbalance with its neighbors.12 Thus, although considerably downsized, reserve components still comprise the bulk of Israel’s forces.13 Like Israel, the Taiwanese reserves are seen as the primary military component in times of national emergency and according to some estimates they number about three million soldiers.14 Despite reserves continuing to provide substantial shares in the total forces of Western militaries, it is surprising how relatively little scholarly attention has been devoted to them. Even a cursory review of the social scientific literature on the military reveals that the overwhelming amount of research during the past decades has been carried out on the standing army, comprised of regulars or conscripts. Accordingly, a recent wide-ranging anthology on the sociology of the military does not carry even one article on, or related to, the reserves.15 Furthermore, since the publication of the edited volume by Zurcher and Harries-Jenkins on supplementary forces, no comparable comprehensive volume devoted to the reserves has been issued.16 To be sure, analyses of reserve forces do appear in such contexts as American discussions of the model of “total force”17 or many countries’ debates about the costs and benefits of downsizing.18 And indeed, Armed Forces & Society has published a number of articles focusing on issues related to reserves, such as the impact of deployment on the retention of military reservists, the integration of, and support for, these soldiers’ families, the willingness of decision makers to consider casualties among reservists,19 or Israeli reservists’ motivations or the weakening of the idea of the IDF as a “people’s army.”20 But when compared to the sheer amount of preoccupation with issues related to standing armies, conscripts, regulars, senior commanders, or civil–military relations, one cannot but be struck by the dearth of studies about reserves.



As we previously showed, in many countries, popular imaginings and academic treatises tend to center on three main images: young recruits (often conscripts) serving in combat roles, somewhat older professionals in field units, and senior commanders at the head of large formations.21 Good examples of predominant images of citizen soldiers who were called up for national service and then return to their civilian lives can found in such historical volumes as Band of Brothers22 or The Deadly Brotherhood.23 During the cold war, the stress in much of the historical and social scientific literature was on conscripts while today (with the termination of conscription in most industrialized countries) it is overwhelmingly regulars that are studied. In addition, a good deal of the sociological study of the military has centered on such issues as civil–military relations,24 professionalism,25 and professional selection.26 These kinds of scholarly foci derive from three basic assumptions. First, because conscription was to a great degree “the” definer of citizenship and national identity for many years and in many countries, many social scientists have tended to focus (often unquestioningly) on such troops as both normative and social scientific ideals. These young men seemed to somehow represent the epitome of soldiering in many societies. Indeed, in Israel this view was especially strong given the strong cultural stress on linking youth, Zionist ideals, and conscription as the essence of service to the country.27 Along these lines, the overwhelming majority of works published about Israel’s armed forces tends to concentrate on soldiers in their compulsory term of service. Even when scholars have interviewed reservists, it is usually these soldiers’ period of conscription that has interested them. Lieblich, for instance, interviewed reservists but was interested in the ways that the experience of compulsory enlistment was related to their maturation.28 Similarly, while Ben-Ari investigated a unit of reserve soldiers, he analyzed the ideals of soldiering common to all parts of the IDF.29 The second assumption that many scholars have adopted originates in the selfimage of almost all regular military personnel that they are the “true professionals.” This assumption implies the idea that military skills demand a degree of expertise acquired only through lengthy, institutionalized training and thus that reserves—like other supplementary forces such as paramilitary units, border patrol police, civil guards, or local defense units—cannot be considered truly “professional.”30 This kind of stress has been boosted with the move toward much more technologically advanced militaries in which, it is assumed, supplementary forces cannot compete with regulars in terms of skills and proficiency. What is of significance in these circumstances is the very choice made by scholars about what merits or is worthy of scholarly attention. To put this point simply, but not incorrectly, the governing idea has been that if one wants to study “the” military then the regulars are the prime site for doing so. This point is reinforced by a closely related third assumption that the dominant organizational culture of the military is dictated by the “hard core” of the military, the regulars. This assumption seems to imply that when conscripts and reserves are



mobilized they routinely internalize the dominant ethos and culture of the regulars. To be sure, while recent years are marked by a greater awareness of the cultures of different units (for example, the difference between field or support units, or the distinction between the army and air force), as of yet there has been almost no scholarly attention paid to the variations between different experiences of soldiering (conscripts, regulars, and reserves). This point should be understood against the background of the tendency found among almost all of the psychological and social–psychological disciplines to focus on individuals at the expense of an analysis of the context within which they live and work.31 As a consequence of these trends, Moskos’ older conclusions still hold: while the study of reserves has not remained a “terra incognita,” there is still a dearth of sustained studies.32 Against this background, we suggest that the assumptions placing the analysis of reserve forces at the periphery of military sociology paradoxically underscore the uniqueness of reservists and the (social and theoretical) challenge that they pose: they are not young conscripts undergoing a nationalized period of their lives, nor regulars who are full-time soldiers. Rather, while they do serve for many years in military contexts they are also very much rooted in the civilian sphere. These are not soldiers whose lives are almost totally appropriated by the armed forces but troops who are involved only partially. They are also not professionals in the proper sense of the word but often their military work draws on their civilian experience and knowledge. Finally, their social status may be anchored in contexts outside the military. Thus, as we shall see, the peculiarity of reserve service lies in its dynamic elements: reservists constantly move between dimensions of space and time and mediate social contexts of involvement and knowledge.

Reservists as “Transmigrants”: Moving between Worlds Why use the image of transmigrants to characterize the peculiar features of military reserves? At a minimum, transmigration refers to some combination of plural membership in social groups or social networks, and cultural identities reaching across and linking people and institutions in two or more nation-states in diverse patterns.33 Probably more than any other area in the social sciences, the study of transmigration focuses on the flow of people, identities, and ideas between different worlds. In contrast to classic studies of migration that examined the movement of migrants as unidirectional, linear, and teleological, the movement of contemporary migrants between worlds is often circular and continual.34 Thus, to illuminate the special character and dynamics of reserve soldiers, we suggest likening them to transmigrants, those migrants who have (at least) two permanent homes in different countries and who more or less regularly travel between them. We make this suggestion because, like transmigrants, reservists move between different cultural and social spaces and



as a result create the potential for communities and social networks that cross political, social, and organizational boundaries and form conduits for the flow of ideas, interests, and identities. To be clear, we are not arguing that reserve service and transmigration are identical social situations. We do contend that this analogy underscores the dynamic, dualistic, and dialectical aspects of the structural position of reservists and their personal experiences. In other words, the value of this conceptualization lies in its power to illuminate how reservists as civilians–soldiers cross boundaries and obliges us to analyze the implications of being rooted simultaneously in and moving between two worlds. By likening reservists to transmigrants, we propose a number of insights derived from the research in migration studies and then develop them in our text. The first point is the idea that they are a special group that constantly “travels,” mediates, or challenges between the army and wider civilian society. Second, we suggest that they are a military group whose identity consists of both civil and martial elements. Third, when applied to the case of reservists, this imagery underscores the special potentials and threats that such soldiers represent for the standing army. Fourth and finally, the idea of transmigration underscores the processual nature of their lives involving continuous mobilization, service, demobilization, civilian life, and mobilization yet again. In this respect, however, the likening of reservists to transmigrants calls attention to their double construction of time. Reservists move in circular patterns of mobilization and demobilization but also along developmental lines rooted in their life course. Just as transmigrants are never the same when they visit their homelands, so reservists are different each time they enter service.

Mediation: Civilizing and Softening the Military To begin with, like transmigrants, a number of scholars have noted that when activated, many reservists bring into the military the resources, skills, and abilities of their civilian occupations and specializations.35 Indeed, according to American reports, the most successful military occupations staffed by reservists during the Gulf War of the early 1990s were ones most closely linked to civilian specializations.36 More generally, members of the reserves bring with them into military life valued civilian experience.37 To give one example, reservists’ familiarity with organizational innovations outside the military (in civilian workplaces) may be a source of innovation within the armed forces. Thus, Williams, a marine reservist with expertise in teaching, found himself instructing his fellows using his proficiency in education.38 Along the same lines, reservists may bring certain standards of civilian management, expertise, knowledge, and methods with them into the military. As we shall see, however, from the point of view of the regulars, the importation of more civilian management knowledge and values may weaken the institutional side of the military. Furthermore, reservists may be better suited for missions that involve policing and peacekeeping since they are older and perhaps less aggressive and more tolerant.



A very good example is the IDF’s action in the second Al-Aqsa Intifada. As a response to strong public criticism about what was happening at checkpoints, it established a special unit of reserve volunteers specializing in the handling of Palestinian civilians. The role of this unit has been to act as a moderating force for conscripts who usually staff these checkpoints.39 Another example taken from the IDF are the units comprised exclusively of reserve officers who announce the death of soldiers to their families. Here again the assumption is that it is such older individuals who have the maturity to handle such difficult circumstances.40 In addition, as Willett proposed, reserves involve a link between the civilian population and the military.41 Reservists as individuals, and the associations to which they often belong, often break down the civil–military gap and incorporate the military into parts of wider society. This role seems to be of especial importance given the strong antinational and antimilitaristic movements and sentiments that characterize many Western countries and Japan.42 Walker also indicated that most Americans come in direct contact with military forces only through their local reserve units.43 In other words, in this capacity reservists can act as mediators between the army and civil society.44 Doing away with reserve forces may thus reinforce a homogeneous political ideology within the regular armed forces and make control of their actions actually more difficult.45 A concrete example is Germany. German reservists, like conscripts, are seen as an important go-between mediating the armed forces and wider society. From the point of view of the armed forces, such people may act as “image-bearers” or spokespersons giving the military a positive image.46 Conversely, reservists may be seen as cultural carriers introducing military, martial values and considerations into the civilian part of a given society. The next point seems especially pertinent to current concerns around the world. The deputy head of the Inter-allied Confederation of Reserve Officers stated that reserve officers’ associations can act as mediators between the state and civil society by advocating and explaining responsible, democratic government policies within the public domain.47 More importantly, this role might now be extended to new countries that have recently democratized such as Poland, Hungary, or the Czech Republic. Gerry goes further to point out that reserve officers may well address and teach army regulars about democratic institutions, procedures, and legislation.48 In this way, reserves may break down the isolation of regulars by not allowing them to become a “caste apart” with its own political orientations and priorities.49 As in Germany, so in Japan the threat of the nondemocratic potential of the military is one that has a historical precedent and is evident in contemporary society in a “widely shared suspicion that antidemocratic forces are afoot . . . seeking to exploit the security issue to engineer a reactionary takeover.”50 While the existence of reserve forces does not guarantee a democratic potential, they do not constitute a “separate purposive organization which threatens the legitimacy of the civil authority, from which they do not usually form, as does the regular military, a detached status group.”51 It is precisely this role of reserves as thwarting the potential “sectorialization” of the



regular army that stands at base of the arguments of people who oppose the transformation of the IDF into a small professional army.52 To be clear, we are not making a simple argument that some reservists may be better situated to act as intermediaries. Rather, our more general point is that like transmigrants belonging to two societies, the very structural position of reservists “in between” the civilian and military sectors facilitates their potential role as mediators. To be sure, there are other mechanisms that carry out such roles (local-level politicians, recruitment officers, or the public relations departments of military arms and units). What is peculiar to reservists then again is their dual rootedness in two worlds: they are the only players with a firmly planted foot in both the civilian and military realms.

“Double Vision”: Challenging the Military World A major feature of reserve service is the experience of constant mobilization and demobilization. Williams brings this out vividly for the case of U.S. Marine reservists.53 After returning home from basic training, he comments: This was my first of many recurring experiences with a process I call reintegration— the mental, physical, and emotional transition from being in a combat-ready Marine mode to society-ready civilian mode. Active-duty Marines experience reintegration briefly, if at all, as they pass through hometowns during their ten-day period of leave. . . . There is little time, and even less necessity for them to return to civilian ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. . . . Our drill instructors had not prepared us for the process of reintegration . . . because it is a phenomenon that is unique to reservists.

Analytically speaking, this constant movement may—like the shifting of transmigrants between different homes—bring about much more critical thinking about “what is going on” within the military. Like migrants going back home,54 so reservists often do not accept what goes on around them as taken for granted and are thus maybe more challenging of established arrangements than are conscripts and regulars. The idea here is that reservists have a special kind of “double vision” (or double consciousness): they see things in and about the military organization that people from inside it or outside it do not see (or do not want to see). This situation implies that reservists can sometimes act as powerful monitors of the standing military and hold it accountable for certain actions that external regulators cannot. This special power, we suggest, derives from the fact that the movement between “homes” may potentially lead to what are, from a phenomenological point of view, more unconventional interpretations of reality. But this movement also leads to a greater relative independence of reservists from military control. Thus, while regulars have strong vested interests in the military organization in terms of their careers and identity, conscripts tend to be heavily dependent on the institution. Reservists,



however, because of their dual allegiance to different groups, may be less accountable to the military hierarchy: they are simultaneously “special soldiers” and “special civilians.” The critical potential of reservists is very striking in the case of Israel. Since the war in 1973, reservists have often led social movements critiquing military blunders or the moral actions of IDF soldiers.55 Moreover, what is frequently important in this regard is that it is reserve service itself, most often in combat units, which is used as a justification for voicing criticisms. In other words, it is out of a commitment to the military that many reservists feel that they can and should critique IDF actions.56 More widely, our point is that “civilian–soldiers” may thus be much more sensitive to public opinion about the rationale for committing forces to combat and the moral implications of their military actions. At the same time, however, the other side of what may be termed the regulatory or critical potential of the reserves may involve the acceptance of the official military’s line by the reservists and their transformation into informal lobbyists for this point of view. The sociological implication of this situation is that reserves service at once both reproduces social conceptions about the military—it clearly replicates hierarchies and is based on martial considerations— and has a subversive potential to undermine these very pecking orders and concerns.

Legitimacy and the Service of Reservists Most policies related to the recruitment and retention of reservists focus on issues of compensation. Yet given that the military (along with the police) is the organization most strongly identified with the legitimate use of violence,57 there are certain institutional aspects related to their deployment. This was the idea that lay at the base of the American model of total force.58 The plan was that in a force mingling regulars and reservists, no more wars would be fought without popular support: politicians would only use the reserves under conditions of widespread public backing. Along these lines, Brown and Merrill report that there is much more need for public approval for the deployment of reserves than there is for the assignment of regulars.59 We find similar situations in Britain where political decision makers need clear guarantees those very serious interests are at stake to mobilize reservists. From military leaders’ point of view, these kinds of emphases are part of the importance of new criteria for assessing military exploits,60 and changing public attitudes toward the use of force and the perpetration of violence.61 In other words, alongside their potential role criticizing the military, reservists can also grant the armed forces and their missions a great measure of legitimacy and acceptance. These insights are further reinforced when the Israeli case is examined. A number of scholars have argued that the effectiveness of armies based on the militia system— as in Israel—is based on the existence of a wide consensus over security matters.62 These are the considerations that lay behind the decision not to use reservists when the IDF occupied southern Lebanon. To complicate matters further, however, reservists



are not only “negative” limiting factors because their very presence may grant a military action legitimacy and justification. Thus, in the IDF’s Operation Defensive Shield in the Occupied Territories that came in the wake of a spate of terror attacks in 2002, the sight of reservists and the fact that reservists were killed in action was part of the way in which the acceptability of the operation was created. Indeed, our wider contention is that it is precisely because reservists belong not only to the military realm but also to the civilian one that their role as legitimating agents is so potentially important.

Regulars and Reservists: Tensions and Negotiations It is the dual potential of reserves (embedded as it is in the interlaced movement between worlds), that lies at the base of the relations between regulars and reservists. Just as transmigrants coming back to one of their homes, so reservists sometimes understand that they are strangers to what was their home in the past and may perceive themselves as not being fully part of this local world. The “locals,” in our case members of the regular force, thus may look on the transmigrants with ambivalence or suspicion. Commentators around the world have noted the suspicious, often critical attitude that regulars show toward reserves.63 Zurcher and Harries-Jenkins mention that reserves are sometimes viewed as “marginal organizations” within the structure of national armed forces.64 Similarly, Moskos pointed out that reservists in Operation Iraqi Freedom felt they were treated as “second-class” members of the army, because of inadequate training and poorer equipment compared to the active duty forces.65 And Pritchard reports that reservists attached to regular U.S. Marine forces felt that the latter considered that “they were somehow better than the reserve community.”66 Long ago, Bennell noted that regulars often critiqued reserves because of “skill fade,” the reservists’ rapid loss of military technical skills.67 In France, they are considered to be only “part-time” professionals, indicating that they are somehow deficient in their professionalism,68 and Sarkesian and Connor note that some degree of friction between the standing army and the militia has been characteristic of the U.S. armed forces for long periods of time.69 One example that has been cited recently concerns the “roundout” brigades of the American National Guard that were deployed during the Gulf War of the 1990s but which were seen by many generals as illprepared to go directly into combat.70 In Britain and the United States, an added problem is the disinclination of employers to support reservists and the latter’s reluctance to leave workplaces during conditions of high unemployment.71 Underlying such worries on the part of regulars may be a suspicion about whether reservists will, indeed, turn up: whether they are committed to the same extent as regulars. It is no surprise then, that reserves in the United States have been characterized by regulars as no more than “fillers”72 or indeed “Spare Parts.”73



These kinds of reservations are based on deep-rooted assumptions mentioned before: about the practice of military skills demanding a degree of expertise that can only be acquired through extensive training in the highly institutionalized settings of the standing army. Thus, from the point of view of regulars, the importation of more civilian management knowledge and values by reservists may actually weaken the institutional side of the military. In other words, because of the military’s expertise in the management of violence, it has developed a special set of social structures and dynamics, and necessitates different kinds of training, incentive structures, and career paths for its personnel than is found in the civilian sphere. The worry, from the perspective of regulars, is that reservists may be deficient in these characteristics. Indeed, this potential, albeit phrased differently, is at the base of Zurcher and Harries-Jenkins’ contentions about the citizen–soldier whom they characterize as an individualist, unimpressed with rank, and to whom the rituals and rules of the professional militarist are irrelevant and unnecessary.74 Along these lines and furthermore, whereas maturity and tolerance that reservists may show can be positive contributions to forces dealing with civilians, such qualities may actually lead to reduced combat effectiveness. Accordingly, rhetoric aside, reserves—like similar supplementary forces as paramilitary units, border patrol police, civil guards, or local defense units—are often not considered to be truly “professional” by regulars.75 In the same vein, it may be that the reserves threaten the self-image of regulars that is based on a combination of expertise, commitment, and responsibility. In fact, today, in the context of rapid technological change in the military, these ways of thinking center on the professionalism of the reserves. Our impression is that many regular commanders assume that because they are called up for only limited periods of time, reservists cannot reach the appropriate level of competence to be on par with regulars in the operation of technologically advanced weaponry. In other words, in today’s historical context the structural tension between regulars and reserves is intensified by technological and organizational changes. In this sense, we go beyond Walker’s suggestions that reservists often have “great difficulty in understanding the ethic of the Army’s dominant regular combat officers . . . [and that] regular officers do not understand reserve forces, because they have been socialized into a regular army culture.”76 We suggest that this difficulty is specifically related to the interstitial existence of reservists. Like transmigrants that constantly negotiate the two societies they are part of, so reservists have a strong potential for not accepting the taken-for-granted assumptions of regulars. We stress that this critical potential is not related only to the political level but no less importantly involves challenging some of the assumptions at base of military culture. While in the previous section we alluded to the way in which the movement between worlds leads to a critical perspective on the military as an arm of the state, here we refer to the voice that may contest some of the organizational principles of the military. This point leads us to the next section in which we examine the different kind of “contract” struck between reservists and the military. This contract has a much



stronger element of conditionality based on the fact that more than regulars, reservists may negotiate with the armed forces both about the ground rules of the organization as the missions they are charged with.

The Implicit Contract between Reserves and the Military Against this background, we may understand how members of the standing army may have an ambivalent attitude toward reserve components. The latter may be a source of legitimacy yet can also form a social basis for internal criticism; they are ready sources of manpower but ones that are expensive and potentially troublesome. More widely, however, if we understand the permeable boundaries between the military and civilian sectors as zones of negotiation, friction, and fluidity, then it becomes clear how reservists may become a major group that bargains with the military. In this respect, we suggest looking at the informal or unwritten contract between the reservists and the army, at what is sometimes called the “psychological contract” between employees and their organizations or what Mines calls the “implicit understandings” between the U.S. National Guard and Reserves and the military.77 According to our research78 and some reports from the American context, reservists are very wary of time wasted on unnecessary activities during their times of service.79 To put this wider point by way of example, we suggest that the demands of reservist may be encapsulated in a few sentences: “Make my service meaningful,” “Call me (only) when I am really needed,” “Utilize my time in an effective manner,” “Train me in a suitable manner,” “Respect me and my actions,” and “Give me reasonable conditions.” A very pertinent example can be found in the conflict in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. When the Minister of Defense visited a recently mobilized reserve unit, one soldier told him “We all entered service with high motivation but use us prudently. . . . We know what kind of equipment and training we received. Don’t insert us into any adventures that we cannot handle.”80 To be sure, just as historically, many Israelis were readily mobilized as reserves in times of war, so this happened in the United States during the two Gulf Wars.81 The willingness to volunteer for security purposes increases in times of felt national need. Nevertheless, our point is that in the military, reservists are willing to be mobilized if within this contract the regular army provides them with opportunities for meaningful service, for respect for the very fact that they are serving, and affords them substantial nonmaterial incentives. In Israel, when their expectations have not been met, reservists have left service, voiced their concerns within the military, organized themselves in pressure groups, or turned to the media. In fact, Israeli reservists have become a rather formidable lobby group in this society’s political arena. Accordingly, among the actions that the IDF has undertaken to forestall such actions have been a new rhetorical openness to



reforms in the character of reserve service, a recognition of the various pressure groups, and many concrete changes made in regard to conditions of service (such as special payment for those serving beyond twenty-six days or cellular phones for commanders). In addition, a new position—that of a regular Chief Reserve Officer with the rank of brigadier general—was created to specifically deal with special problems related to reserves such as conditions of service (of university students, for instance), equipment, and stipulations about employment. In addition, it is the Chief Reserve Officer who represents the interests of the reserves in a variety of decisionmaking forums. Finally, a recent innovation has been the creation of “Reserve Day” during which a host of activities devoted to publicly recognizing and acknowledging those people taking on the burden of reserve duty. In contrast to other voluntary organizations through which individuals can actualize themselves and link themselves to the collective, the army still has coercive mechanisms that assure the service of reservists. It is still very much a total institution based on clear legal grounds binding soldiers to it as an institution and has its own disciplinary system. Yet the dynamics in and around the implicit contract demonstrate that there is still a strong element of voluntarism in reserve duty, in the sense that mobilization to such service cannot be fully explained by the coercive powers of the state and the military. This would fit very well with the kinds of problems that all the industrial states are facing with filling in their quotas for reservists. For example, even before the U.S. military entered the Iraqi quagmire, all of its combat arms were already having problems finding recruits for reserves. Perhaps one reason for the continued problems that such militaries face in terms of their reserve components is that the implicit “psychological” contract is sometimes invisible to members of the permanent force. Thus, for example, according to our impressions, there are few formal or informal parameters for appraising the degree to which the contract is carried out. We use the Israeli case to elucidate our propositions. To begin with, we suggest that it would be profitable to examine the actual negotiations that take place between reserve soldiers and their military units. Based on research carried out in Israel, we would hypothesize that there is much more leeway for negotiations and consultation between reservists and regulars than among the regulars themselves.82 This may be true because among the latter, the strictures of hierarchy and discipline are much stronger. Furthermore, these circumstances may be the outcome of what sociologists call status inconsistency between age, formal rank, civilian status, income, and role. Thus, for example, one may find a mid-level bank manager or administrator under the command of a relatively young officer who has just joined the reserves. More generally, it seems that there is something about many reservists’ association with the military that is emotional, nostalgic, and embedded in social ties, all features that are reminiscent of the kinds of bonds that migrants have to the home they have left and to which they return. Yet at the same time, there is something voluntary about this revisiting because the migrant has another home where his or her life and



identity are anchored. The analogy to transmigrants thus underscores the voluntary, emotional, and nostalgic elements that are part of reserve service. It is this rather unique kind of link to the military that undergirds the kinds of conditions and stipulations attendant on the implicit contract we have been examining in this section. Reservists, like transmigrants, have cross-cutting commitments that demand allegiance and devotion but also allow autonomy and room for bargaining.

The Organizational and Cultural Dynamics of Reserve Duty: An Israeli Example Our analysis involves a number of implications for how social scientists formulate theoretical conceptions for the study of reserve forces. Almost three decades ago, Zurcher and Harries-Jenkins proposed that the assumption that the basic professionalism of the reserves is lacking according to the standards of the regular forces restricts an understanding of the peculiarities of the latter.83 Accordingly, our proposition, made earlier in this article, is that because we social scientists have often unthinkingly adopted the assumptions of regulars in our analyses of reserves, we may have been blinded to the unique character of such forces. To put our point simply but not incorrectly: we need to look at reserve duty as a special kind of military experience that is not a “watered-down” version, a deficient model, of active duty but a special social phenomenon with its own dynamics and features. If we understand that the central peculiarity of reserve duty lies in its position between and within the civilian and military spheres, then we can appreciate that it cannot be examined with the same kind of analytical frameworks one applies to compulsory or regular service. In the Israeli case, this structural position of the reserves—and their movement between the civilian and military worlds—expresses itself in the tendency toward commitment to the military, which is based more on voluntarism, trust, and influence than on coercion and authority. These characteristics seem especially important in the case of “organic reserve units”; that is, frameworks characterized by permanent membership and structure of roles that are mobilized as one complete organized entity. In such units, the informal means for the creation of commitment are often much more important than the formal or legal regulations obliging soldiers to serve in the military. Moreover, these resources can often be found outside the military’s official boundaries. For example, many Israeli reserve units conduct parties, family gatherings, and weekend hiking trips when they are off-duty. Such informal social activities, which are reminiscent of organizations and actions organized by migrants groups, nurture cohesion and solidarity among the soldiers, and as many reservists report, operate as a fundamental mechanism that creates and maintains motivation and sense of belonging. A focus on families reveals another kind of dynamic. Being mobilized for reserve duty, whatever the usual division of familial labor, forces families to restructure and



places women in much more of a “homemaker” role, both vis-à-vis such issues as child care, shopping, and household chores as in relation to the men who are in service. Spouses, overwhelmingly wives, of reserve soldiers labor during their men’s reserve service: their child rearing, cooking, cleaning, and household maintenance responsibilities necessarily increase. Sociologically speaking, for the duration of reserve duty these families become single-parent households and through their labor, wives participate in supporting and maintaining the reserve system. Yet families of reserve troops are constantly mobilized and demobilized as familial units in ways that are different from the family dynamics of regulars or conscripts. They necessitate adaptations to constantly changing circumstances. Relations between the civilian and martial spheres are now maintained not only during “off-duty” times, but also during active deployments. The spreading use in cellular phones, for example, enables Israeli reservists to keep in constant contact with their families and workplaces when they are in uniform. Many reservists actually report that they continue to run their businesses or partially participate in civilian assignments during active service. Thus, it seems that such advanced communication technology has the potential to narrow the spatial and temporal gap between the two realms. All of these points underscore how the unique character of reserve service is affected by the permeable boundaries between the civilian and the martial worlds. Still, in Israel, and we would propose in many other contexts,84 reserve duty is often marked by a sudden and intensive entry into the severe demands of army life. For many Israeli men (there are few women who serve in the reserves), this is a yearly move into a period during which they are allowed, even required, to behave differently. Thus for example, our argument is that going on reserve duty involves entering a special behavioral frame that is governed by rules different from those of everyday life. In Israel, these circumstances allow many reservists to display “irregular” public behaviors like cursing and swearing, belching and farting, urinating and spitting, and talking dirty, all in public.85 This point is reinforced by the fact that reserve forces are characterized by a special kind of organizational culture what Willett calls a “lively social organization.”86 While such an organizational climate is often an extension of the culture of the regular formations it also has some rather unique features. Thus, Sion and Ben-Ari trace out the peculiar kind of humor that emerges in Israeli reserve units.87 It is such humor, we would suggest, that allows the rather rapid move from civilian into military life. Humor is important since it allows men to deal with organizational tensions, to create a good climate for motivation, and to construct relatively close, cohesive groups of men. In a similar manner, if compulsory service in Israel is a rite of passage, reserve duty underscores how national service also involves rites of affirmation for groups of Israeli men who serve in the reserves. By periodically reliving their military selves, such soldiers affirm their identity as citizens who contribute to the security of the “collective,” as military professionals, and as men. During these periods they are actually and symbolically “torn away” from their civilian lives to partake in a collective



occasion in which certain key values are validated. To put this point by way of an American example, Williams describes how on entry to reserve duty, “Small cliques of Marines formed around certain racks to celebrate their monthly reunion. There was a sense of brotherhood among the Marines of Weapons Platoon. It was a sense of belonging that I hoped to be part of one day.”88 Yet this validation is not based on some kind of developmental trajectory in which new positions are attained. Rather, what are validated anew are the values of youth. This cyclical movement is predicated on a return to the criteria used in appraising soldiership and manhood during the compulsory term of service.89 To put this point picturesquely, the image is of older men who periodically return to their eighteen- and nineteen-year-old (male) selves. Thus, reserve duty does not only represent an entry into a different behavioral frame but is very often a time for celebrating or marking military masculinity and membership in a special group of military men.90 In this manner, while reserve duty affirms the centrality of men–soldiers, it is also (even more than compulsory service) excludes women who do not participate in it. This point brings us to the issue of reserve duty and inequality. Some time ago, Willett mentioned that the Canadian militia was an avenue of mobility91 and Hasenbohler concurred that the Swiss militia could enhance a civilian career.92 In Israel, Horowitz and Kimmerling noted that while reserve duty may be a factor in social mobility it is also a mechanism for the stratification and hierarchization of social groups.93 The point here is that the “contribution” that one makes in the military sphere can be “translated” into resources in the civilian sphere: status, access to positions, or influence, for example. Thus, participation in the reserves may carry a host of advantages from an individual point of view. Other scholars, for example, maintain that the military is a means to variously include and exclude different social groups form the social center.94

Conclusion In this article, we have suggested that by looking at reserves as transmigrants we may better understand how such forces are distinguished by some rather specific features and patterns. At base of our contentions lies a wider proposition (unexplored in this contribution) that from a sociological and organizational point of view, it may be productive to conceptualize three segments of the military each of which has its own dynamics: regulars, conscripts, and reserves. The advantage of this kind of analytical differentiation is that it allows us to examine different patterns of motivation, cohesion, political commitment, and awareness, and long-term considerations that characterize each segment. Such a conceptualization raises new theoretical questions regarding reserve forces and factors that shape the service of reservists as civilian–soldiers, their experiences, and their suitability for combat and noncombat missions.95 More generally, we call for research that examines the dual structure and the fluid movement of reservists not only from a functionalist perspective. Such perspective will



allow future scholarly research to explore three key questions. First, it will allow a richer comparative perspective on different national reserve components that can, at once, underscore the common features of such forces and the particular national ones in specific reserve systems. Second, our analysis may, and should, point our attention to other populations and in-between organizations that, in ways similar to reserves, act on the boundaries between civil society and the military, cross back and forth between the social worlds, and, more importantly, mediate between them. Third, from an organizational point of view, enhancing empirical research on the reserves may reveal new insights about the mechanisms being used by military officials to advance the institution’s interests within civilian society and the mutual effects between the martial and civilian spheres. Clearly the question of what sort of difference might it make to institutionally recognize reservists’ transmigrancy is a topic for further investigation.

Notes 1. Wallace Earl Walker, “Comparing Army Reserve Forces: A Tale of Multiple Ironies, Conflicting Realities, and More Certain Prospects,” Armed Forces & Society 18, 3 (1992): 303-20. 2. Eyal Ben-Ari, Edna Lomsky-Feder, and Nir Gazit, “Notes on the Study of Military Reserves: Between the Military and Civilian Spheres,” in Building Sustainable and Effective Military Capabilities: A Systematic Comparison of Professional and Conscript Forces, ed. Kristina Spohr-Readman (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2004), 64-78. 3. Terry C. Willett, “The Military Infra-Structure of Contemporary Canada: The Case of the Militia,” in Supplementary Military Forces: Reserves, Militias, Auxiliaries, ed. Louis A. Zurcher and Gwyn Harries-Jenkins (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1978), 126-51. 4. Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak, Trouble in Utopia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). 5. See for example, Martha Derthick, The National Guard in Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965). 6. F. L. Brown and A. R. Merrill, “Challenges of U.S. Army Reserve Force Readiness,” in The U.S. Army in a New Security Era, ed. Sam C. Sarkesian and John A. Williams (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990); L. Unterseher, Europe’s Armed Forces at the Millennium: A Case of Change in France, The United Kingdom, and Germany (Cambridge, MA: Commonwealth Institute Project on Defense Alternatives, 1999), http://www.comw.org/pda/9911eur.html; Jan van der Meulen, “The Netherlands: The Final Professionalization,” in The Postmodern Military: Armed Forces After the Cold War, ed. Charles Moskos, John Allen Williams, and David R. Segal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 101-20. 7. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2000). 8. Information from United States Department of Defense, The United States Reserve Forces: A Value Added Force (DOD, April, 2002), www.dod.gov. 9. Charles Moskos, “Towards a New Conception of the Citizen Soldier,” unpublished manuscript presented at Foreign Policy Research Institute conference on “The Future of the Reserves and National Guard,” held on December 6, 2004. 10. Information from United Kingdom Ministry of Defense, A Territorial Army for the Future, 2003, http://www.mod.uk/issues/territorial_army/index.htm; L. Unterseher, Europe’s Armed Forces at the Millennium. 11. L. Unterseher, Europe’s Armed Forces at the Millennium.



12. R. Gal, A Portrait of the Israeli Soldier (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1986); Stewart Cohen, The IDF and Israeli Society: A Renewed Analysis (BESA Center for Strategic Studies: Bar Ilan University, 2001), 10 (Hebrew). 13. G. Ben-Dor, A. Pedahzur, and B. Hasisi, “Israel’s National Security Doctrine under Strain: The Crisis of the Reserve Army,” Armed Forces & Society 28 (2002): 233-55. 14. Michael E. O’Hanlon, “Why China Cannot Conquer Taiwan,” International Security 25 (2000): 51-86; Taiwan National Defense, Government Information Office, 2000, http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwanwebsite/5-gp/yearbook/chpt08.htm. 15. Giuseppe Caforio, ed., The Sociology of the Military (Cheltenham: Elgar, 1998). 16. Louis A. Zurcher and Gwyn Harries-Jenkins, introduction to Supplementary Military Forces: Reserves, Militias, Auxiliaries, Louis A. Zurcher and Gwyn Harries-Jenkins, ed. (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1978), 11-37. 17. Stephen M. Duncan, Citizen Warriors: America’s National Guard and Reserve Forces and the Politics of National Security (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1997). 18. Brown and Merrill, “Challenges of U.S. Army Reserve Force Readiness.” 19. L. Gorman and G. W. Thomas, “Enlistment Motivations of Army Reservists: Money, SelfImprovement, or Patriotism?” Armed Forces & Society 17 (1991): 589-99; Sheila Nataraj Kirby and Richard J. Buddin, Enlisted Personnel Trends in the Selected Reserve (Santa Monica, CA, RAND, 1996); Sheila Nataraj Kirby and Scott Naftel, “The Impact of Deployment on the Retention of Military Reservists,” Armed Forces & Society 26 (2000): 259-84; S. J. Perry, J. Griffith, and T. White, “Retention of Junior Enlisted Soldiers in the All-Volunteer Army Reserve,” Armed Forces & Society 18 (1991): 111-33; Lolita Burrell, Doris Briley Durand, and Jennifer Fortado, “Military Community Integration and Its Effect on Well-Being and Retention,” Armed Forces & Society 30, 1 (2003): 7-24; Hugh Smith, “What Costs Will Democracies Bear? A Review of Popular Theories of Casualty Aversion,” Armed Forces & Society 31, 4 (2005): 487-512. See also B. J. Wilson and L. Gould, “Mobilizing Guard and Reserve Forces,” in The Guard and the Reserve in the Total Force, ed. B. J. Wilson (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 1985). 20. Edna Lomsky-Feder and Eyal Ben-Ari, “From ‘The People in Uniform’ to ‘Different Uniforms for the People’: Professionalism, Diversity and the Israeli Defense Forces,” in Managing Diversity in the Armed Forces, ed. J. Soetres and J. van der Meulen (Tilburd: Tilburg University Press, 1999), 157-86. 21. Ben-Ari, Lomsky-Feder, and Gazit, “Notes on the Study of Military Reserves.” 22. Stephen Ambrose, Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagles Nest (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001). 23. John C. McManus, The Deadly Brotherhood: The American Combat Soldier in World War II (Novato CA: Presidio, 2000). 24. Peter D. Feaver, “Civil-Military Relations,” Annual Review of Political Science 2 (1999): 211-41. 25. David R. Segal and Joseph J. Langerman, “Professional and Institutional Considerations,” in Combat Effectiveness: Cohesion, Stress and the Volunteer Military, ed. Sam C. Sarkesian (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980), 154-84; Harry Kirkels, Wim Klinkert, and Rene Moelker, ed., Officer Education: The Road to Athens!, Special Issue of NL Arms (Netherlands Annual Review of Military Studies, 2003). 26. Giuseppe Caforio, ed., The European Officer: A Comparative View on Selection and Education (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2000). 27. Eyal Ben-Ari, Zeev Rosenhek, and Daniel Maman, introduction to War, Politics and Society in Israel: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Daniel Maman, Zev Rosenhek, and Eyal Ben-Ari (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001), 1-41. 28. Amia Lieblich, Transition to Adulthood Military Service: The Israeli Case (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). 29. Eyal Ben-Ari, “Masks and Soldiering: The Israeli Army and the Palestinian Uprising,” Cultural Anthropology 4 (1989): 372-89. 30. Zurcher and Harries-Jenkins, Supplementary Military Forces, 13.



31. Ben-Ari, Rosenhek, and Maman, introduction to War, Politics and Society in Israel. 32. Charles Moskos, “The Military,” Annual Review of Sociology 2 (1976): 76. 33. Nina Glick-Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Szanton-Blanc, “From Immigrant to Transmigrant: Theorizing Transnational Migration,” Anthropological Quarterly 2 (1995): 48-63. 34. Zygmunt Bauman, “From Pilgrim to Tourist: A Short History of Identity,” in Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. S. Hall and P. DuGay (London: Sage, 1996), 18-36. 35. Brown and Merrill, “Challenges of U.S. Army Reserve Force Readiness.” 36. Sam C. Sarkesian, John Allen Williams, and Fred B. Bryant, Soldiers, Society and National Security (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 66; Keith Mines, On Fighting a 16-Division War with at 10-Division Force, Foreting Policy Research Institute, March 8, 2005, www.fpri.org. 37. Zurcher and Harries-Jenkins, Supplementary Military Forces, 14. 38. Buzz Williams, Spare Parts: A Marine Reservist’s Journey from Campus to Combat in 38 Days (New York: Gotham Books, 2004). 39. Eyal Ben Ari, Meirav Maymon, Nir Gazit, and Ron Shatzberg, From Checkpoints to Flowpoints: Sites of Friction between the Israel Defense Forces and Palestinians. Gitelson Peace Papers (Jerusalem: The Hary S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, The Hebrew University, 2005). 40. Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi and Eyal Ben-Ari, “A Knock on the Door: Managing Death in the Israeli Defense Forces,” The Sociological Quarterly 4, 3 (2000): 391-412. 41. Willett, “The Military Infra-Structure of Contemporary Canada.” 42. James Burk, “The Decline of Mass Armed Forces and Compulsory Military Services,” Defense Analysis 8 (1992): 45-59 ; J. Van Doorn, “The Decline of the Mass Army in the West: General Reflection,” Armed Forces & Society 1 (1975): 147-57; Thomas U. Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1998). 43. Walker, “Comparing Army Reserve Forces.” 44. Zurcher and Harries-Jenkins, Supplementary Military Forces, 14. 45. Ibid., 17. 46. Alexander Gerry, “Role of Reserve Officer Associations in Sustaining Democracy,” 2002, http:// www.unici.org/cior20022004/E; Walker, “Comparing Army Reserve Forces.” 47. Gerry, “Role of Reserve Officer Associations in Sustaining Democracy.” 48. Ibid. 49. Zurcher and Harries-Jenkins, Supplementary Military Forces, 14. 50. Thomas U. Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1998), 196. 51. Zurcher and Harries-Jenkins, Supplementary Military Forces, 17. 52. Yagil Levy, The Other Army of Israel: Materialist Militarism in Israel [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Yedioth-Aharonoth, 2003). 53. Williams, Spare Parts, 54. 54. Edna Lomsky-Feder and Tamar Rapoport, “Visit, Separation, and Deconstructing Nostalgia: Russian Students Travel to their Old Home,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 29, 1 (2000): 32-57; Alfred Schutz, “The Stranger: An Essay in Social Psychology,” American Journal of Sociology 49, 4 (1944): 499-508. 55. Sara Helman, “Militarism and the Construction of Community,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 25 (1997): 305-32; Edna Lomsky-Feder and Eyal Ben-Ari, Identity, Politics and the Military in Contemporary Israel, unpublished manuscript, 2003. 56. Edna Lomsky-Feder, “Life Stories, War and Veterans: On the Social Distribution of Memories,” Ethos 32 (2004): 82-109. 57. Bernard Boene, “How Unique Should the Military Be? A Review of Representative Literature and Outline of Synthetic Formulation,” European Journal of Sociology 31 (1990): 3-59; Pierre Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field,” in State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn, ed. George Steinmetz (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 53-75.



58. Eliot Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime (New York: Free Press, 2002), 185; Glenn A. Gotz, “Restructuring Reserve Compensation,” in Filling the Ranks: Transforming the U.S. Military Personnel System, ed. Cindy Williams (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 167-88. 59. Brown and Merrill, “Challenges of U.S. Army Reserve Force Readiness.” 60. Bernard Boene, “Trends in the Political Control of Post-Cold War Armed Forces,” in Democratic Societies and Their Armed Forces: Israel in a Comparative Perspective, ed. Stuart A. Cohen (London: Frank Cass. 2000), 75; John MacKinlay, The Peacekeepers: An Assessment of Peacekeeping Operations at the Arab-Israeli Interface (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989). 61. Christopher Bellamy, Knights in White Armour: The New Art of War and Peace, (London: Random House, 1996), 30; James Burk, “Introduction: Ten Years of New Times,” in The Adaptive Military: Armed Forces in a Turbulent World, ed. James Burk (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1998), 12; John H. Faris, “The Looking-Glass Army: Patriotism in the Post-Cold War Era,” Armed Forces & Society 21 (1995): 411-34; Charles Moskos, John Allen Williams, and David R. Segal, “Armed Forces after the Cold War,” in The Postmodern Military, 5-6. 62. Uri Ben-Eliezer, “From a Nation-in-Arms to a Postmodern Army: Military Politics in ‘New Times’ Israel,” Democratic Culture 4-5 (2001): 79-80 (Hebrew); Stuart Cohen, The IDF and Israeli Society: A Renewed Analysis (BESA Center for Strategic Studies, Bar Ilan University, 2001), 11 (Hebrew); Dan Horowitz, “Strategic Limitations of ‘A Nation in Arms,’” Armed Forces & Society 13 (1987): 277-94. 63. Eyal Ben-Ari, Mastering Soldiers: Conflict, Emotions and the Enemy in an Israeli Military Unit (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1998); Duncan, Citizen Warriors; Charles Moskos, Soldiers and Sociology (United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, Government Publishing House, 1998); Zurcher and Harries-Jenkins, Supplementary Military Forces, 12; Walker, “Comparing Army Reserve Forces,” 305. In addition, as one anonymous reviewer of the draft of this article suggested, in the United States the disproportionate number of reservists in some branches or units (such as Civil Affairs or Psychological Operations) give rise to additional tensions centered on the military’s dependence on them. 64. Zurcher and Harries-Jenkins, Supplementary Military Forces, 15. 65. Charles Moskos, “Towards a New Conception of the Citizen Soldier.” 66. Tim Pritchard, Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War. (New York: Ballantine Books, 2005), 18. 67. Anthony Bennell, “European Reserve Forces: England, France and West Germany,” in Zurcher and Harries-Jenkins, Supplementary Military Forces, 39-68. 68. Bernard Boene and Michel Louis Martin, “France: In the Throes of Epoch-Making Change,” in Moskos, Williams and Segal, The Postmodern Military, 51-79. 69. Sam C. Sarkesian and Robert E. Connor, The U.S. Military Profession into the Twenty-First Century: War, Peace and Politics (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 146. 70. Stephen M. Duncan, Citizen Warriors, chap. 2 and P. 38; Sam C. Sarkesian, John Allen Williams, and Fred B. Bryant, Soldiers, Society and National Security (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 65. 71. CIOR (Internalized Confederation of Reserve Officers), 2004 articles, http://www.unici.org/cior 2002004/CIOROfficialHomepage.htm; Duncan, Citizen Warriors, 38. 72. Mines, “On Fighting a 16-Division War.” 73. Buzz Williams, “Spare Parts: A Marine Reservist’s Journey from Campus to Combat in 38 Days.” 74. Zurcher and Harries-Jenkins, Supplementary Military Forces, 16. 75. Ibid., 13. 76. Walker, “Comparing Army Reserve Forces,” 309. 77. Mines, “On Fighting a 16-Division War,” 5. 78. Ben-Ari, Lomsky-Feder, and Gazit “Notes on the Study of Military Reserves.” 79. Pritchard, Ambush Alley. 80. Haaretz, August 2, 2006 (Hebrew). 81. Pritchard, Ambush Alley; Williams, Spare Parts.



82. See for example, Ben-Ari, “Masks and Soldiering”; Ben-Ari, “Mastering Soldiers”; Liora Sion and Eyal Ben-Ari, “Hungry, Weary and Horny”: Joking and Jesting Among Israel’s Combat Reserves” Israel Affairs 11, 4 (2005): 656-72. 83. Zurcher and Harries-Jenkins, Supplementary Military Forces, 15. 84. Williams, Spare Parts. 85. Ben-Ari, “Masks and Soldiering.” 86. Willett, “The Military Infra-Structure of Contemporary Canada.” 87. Liora Sion and Eyal Ben-Ari “Hungry, Weary and Horny: Joking and Jesting Among Israel’s Combat Reserves.” 88. Williams, Spare Parts, 60. 89. Ben-Ari, Mastering Soldiers. 90. Helman, “Militarism and the Construction of Community.” 91. Willett, “The Military Infra-Structure of Contemporary Canada.” 92. Robert C. Hasenbohler, “The Swiss Militia Army,” in Supplementary Military Forces. 93. Dan Horowitz and Baruch Kimmerling, “Some Social Implications of Military Service and the Reserves System in Israel,” Archives European de Sociologie 15 (1974): 262-76. 94. See for example, Levy, The Other Army of Israel. 95. One reviewer of a draft of our article suggested that analytically speaking, one can even speak of another segment of the military: veterans. These individuals are an anomaly for the armed forces because while they still have some privileges, they have no real responsibilities.

Edna Lomsky-Feder is a sociologist at the School of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focus is migration and identity, war and the military in Israel from a culture perspective, and education and nationalism. Address for correspondence: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, School of Education, Mt Scopus, Jerusalem, 91905, Israel; e-mail: [email protected]. Nir Gazit is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His main fields of interest are militarized occupations, low-intensity conflicts, and culture and politics. His current research deals with the experiences of Israeli soldiers during the second Palestinian uprising. E-mail: [email protected]. Eyal Ben-Ari is a professor of anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Previous publications include Body Projects in Japanese Childcare (1997) and Mastering Soldiers (1998). Among recently edited books are (with Edna Lomsky-Feder) The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society (2000), (with Daniel Maman and Zeev Rosenhek) War, Politics and Society in Israel (2001), and (with Timothy Tsu and Jan van Bremen) Perspectives on Social Memory in Japan (2006). E-mail: feba@ netvision.net.il.
