“What Do I Get Out of It?” Youth Military Service Between Self-Sacrifice and Self-Actualization

• In Event: Sociology of Culture Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 18. Political Socialization & Anticipatory Identities

Abstract

Contemporary youth are often described as highly individualized and oriented toward self-actualization, personal choice, and autonomy. Mandatory military service presents a paradox, challenging these ideals by imposing institutional constraint on individual life trajectories. How do youth sustain a sense of autonomy, agency, and choice within a mandatory military framework? What discourses and narratives are mobilized in their processes of meaning-making, and when and how are they used? Drawing on qualitative analysis of focus groups with Israeli youth prior to mandatory military service, this study shows that youth mobilize three partially contradictory narratives to make sense of their impending enlistment: framing the military as a total institution that restricts autonomy, interpreting service as a voluntary act of giving back to the nation, and understanding enlistment as a site of self-actualization and future-oriented self-development. The concurrent use of these narratives enables youth to sustain a sense of agency and moral legitimacy within an authoritarian institution, revealing the integration of militarism, nationalism, and neoliberal discourses. At the same time, framing military service as a site of choice and self-actualization contributes to the normalization and depoliticization of militarism by displacing attention from its coercive, violent, and disciplinary dimensions.

Authors

• Sari R. Alfi-Nissan, University of Oxford

• Michal Pagis, Bar-Ilan University