« S’en remettre » à l’institution militaire

Les conditions sociales de l'engagement dans l'armée

Abstract

In recent years, social sciences research on the military has focused on the study of the “making” of soldiers. This attention has mainly been centered on the military institution as a socializing instance, leaving aside the question of the conditions for possibility of the enlistment. In order to study this question, this article intends to highlight the specificities of the enlistment of volunteers. Volunteers constitute, within the military institution, the lowest-ranking staff and also, very often, the least socially, academically, or culturally equipped. This article emphasizes their disposition to giving themselves over to the military institution, understood as an inclination to accept the rules of the institution, including to submit one-self to the hierarchic authority, as well as to interiorize its categories of perception, judgment and action. Drawing on the sociological portraits of four volunteers, the author reveals how the interiorized dispositions linked to socializations prior to the enlistment, as well as the first steps in the institution, model their conceptions of the enlistment and of the military experiences. She brings to light the diversity of degrees and modalities of adherence to institutional logics. Against the representation of a rigid institution, she shows that the military institution integrates these different forms of enlistment, which then participate in shaping the institution.