A qualitative study of military officers’ perceptions of the adaptions couples make to meet the military organisation’s implicit expectations

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate military officers’ perception of the implicit expectations the organisation has for the officer’s private life and what implications it may have for gender norms at the organisation, family and individual levels. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative approach, using an inductive thematic analysis, was performed. The data was based on 20 interviews with military officers, including 18 men and 2 women. Findings Two main themes, with three subsequent subthemes, were identified. These themes were interpreted as being necessary for the military officer to be able to manage organisational demands. The first included the implicit expectations the organisation had for the family. The three subthemes included the officer’s acceptance of frequent travel demands, adapting private life in accordance to organisational demands and picking a partner that matches the goals of the organisation. The second identified main theme included the military officer’s descriptions of implicit expectations the organisation held for the officer’s partner. Three subthemes were identified, including the partner’s need to be independent and psychologically strong, to take the main responsibility for managing family life and to engage in emotion work with the extended family. Originality/value The findings identify important perceptions that military officers have regarding the military’s expectations for their private life and the adaptive behaviors regularly performed. These adaptive behaviors allow the military officer to be able to engage in work that sustains the organisation.

Finnish Military Officer Identities and Micro-Political Resistance

Drawing on the concept of micro-political resistance, this article presents an empirical analysis of how officers of the Finnish Defence Forces challenge, resist, and reinforce the collective military identities constructed within the prevailing organizational discourses. There is a need for identity work to meet the norms and ideals of the military, but individuals can also work as change agents. Micro-political resistance derives from feelings of otherness as well as conflict between the dominant organizational identities and individuals’ personal interests. This study presents a thematic discourse analysis based on texts written by 108 officers and 12 interviews on the theme of “the ideal soldier.” Three main discourses of micro-political resistance were identified: perceiving the profession of a military officer as a job like any other rather than a sacred calling, putting family first, and being oneself instead of embodying the traditional masculine ideal soldier.

ETHICAL AHD PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTOR IN ARMY PROSE BY A. KUPRIN AND A. GREEN

The article concludes that Kuprin's prose has some influence on Green's work. The biographical basis of their army prose, the similarity of the authors' positions in describing the dramatic fate of a soldier and his psychological trauma, the suppression of his individuality by the army system, the conflict between self-awareness and depersonalization, the fear factor of a person who is naturally incapable of a military regime are pointed out. The following differences are noted: Kuprin reinforces the motive of pity for the humiliated soldier at the expense of the motive of sympathy for him by a young military officer - a protogonist and reasoner; in Green's stories, the characters don’t have double identities; Green's social revolutionary views led to the appearance of a rebel soldier in his stories, but the soldier is a passive character in Kuprin's stories.

European Sectoral Qualifications Framework for Military Officer Profession from the Perspective of the Czech Republic

The article deals with the issue of application of the European Sectoral Qualifications Framework for Military Officer Profession. Paper brings the main results of levelling the Senior Officer Course to the European Core Curriculum for Military Officers (MILOF-CORE). It was found out that 18 out of 35 learning outcomes of the Senior Officer Course were found to considerable degree relevant to the MILOF-CORE, the rest contain a various degree of national specifics. Lessons learned gained from the levelling were employed in a recent revision of study programs of the career courses organized by the Center for Security and Military Strategic Studies of the University of Defence.

British, but also French: Paul Mascarene’s Translation of Molière’s Le Misanthrope in Colonial Nova Scotia

This article examines a little-studied manuscript translation of Molière’s Le Misanthrope, made in eighteenth-century British Nova Scotia by a military officer named Paul Mascarene, for what it can tell us about the complicated assimilation of Huguenots in the global refuge. It argues that the undated manuscript shows the surprising extent to which Mascarene, a Huguenot who fled France in childhood, remained culturally French even as he was a perfectly assimilated Briton, and that he can be seen as a cultural ambassador between his homelands new and old. The manuscript here is closely scrutinized in relation both to Molière’s original 1666 play and a published English translation that is approximately contemporaneous to Mascarene’s own effort. Comparison of the three versions of the play show that Mascarene was a skilled and thoughtful translator, committed to accurately rendering Molière’s words while also making changes that reflected his personal religious values. This article also considers the assertion that Mascarene’s translation served as the basis of a performance in Annapolis Royal in 1743 or 1744 and shows that close scrutiny of the manuscript does not support this conclusion. Instead, Mascarene’s translation of Molière’s Le Misanthrope may best be understood as a sign of how Huguenots like him may have maintained and even sought to share with others aspects of their former identities even as they sought to conform to the cultural norms of their new homelands. Cet article étudie une traduction manuscrite du Misanthrope de Molière, réalisée dans la Nouvelle-Écosse britannique au dix-huitième siècle par un officier militaire nommé Paul Mascarene, pour ce qu’elle peut nous dire sur l’assimilation compliquée des Huguenots dans le refuge mondial. Il soutient que le manuscrit montre à quel point Mascarene, un Huguenot qui a quitté la France à l’âge de onze ans et qui est réputé parfaitement assimilé à la culture britannique, est resté culturellement français. Le manuscrit est ici examiné par rapport à la pièce originale de 1666 de Molière et à une traduction en anglais publiée qui est à peu près contemporaine de celle de Mascarene. La comparaison des trois versions de la pièce montre que Mascarene était un traducteur habile et réfléchi, déterminé à traduire fidèlement les paroles de Molière tout en apportant des changements qui reflètent ses valeurs personnelles et religieuses. Cet article examine aussi l’affirmation fréquente selon laquelle la traduction de Mascarene a servi de base à une représentation à Annapolis Royal en 1743 ou 1744, et montre qu’un examen attentif du manuscrit ne corrobore pas cette conclusion. Au lieu de cela, le manuscrit peut être mieux compris comme un aperçu de la façon dont les Huguenots comme Mascarene auraient pu maintenir et même chercher à partager avec d’autres certains aspects de leurs anciennes identités tout en cherchant à se conformer aux normes culturelles de leurs nouvelles patries.

Infrapolitics and role abeyance: How Irish military officers experience university

Starting in 1969, the Irish Defence Forces began to send its officers to attend civilian university in University College Galway as part of their professional formation, through the University Service Administrative Complement (USAC) scheme. Using a conceptual framework that combines role theory with James C. Scott’s concept of ‘infrapolitics’, this paper interrogates how or whether full time, commissioned officers negotiate role tensions while attending civilian higher education as part of their professional military formation. Role theory would suggest that those who are expected to maintain two roles simultaneously, i.e. as student and military officer, would be expected to experience ‘role strain’. This paper illustrates instead that student officers deploy a variety of infrapolitical tactics and strategies, thus creating an alternative route to negotiating role tensions and anxiety.

“The Mukri Kurds” by O. L. Vilchevsky: What and Why Has Been Deleted Before Publication?

The article deals with the problem of political influence on scholarship. It analyses the existing versions of an ethnographic essay by Oleg Vilchevsky, a prominent Soviet Orientalist. Alongside a published version the ethnographic essay “The Mukri Kurds” — an author’s typescript, “Mukri Kurdistan,” has been found in the Scientific Archive of Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The first materials for this essay were collected by Vilchevsky during his journey to Iran in 1942 as he prepared a military-political description of the Kurdish regions. Before publication, the state-controlled structures removed or made the author remove from the essay a number of important thematic blocks, e. g., on interconfessional relations in Mukri Kurdistan of Iran (focusing on Mahabad), descriptions of various meetings Vilchevsky held with Kurdish activists. The paper analyses the content of this scholarly study and the problems related to the publication of the essay in the context of Vilchevsky’s participation as a Soviet military officer in the implementation of the Soviet Middle Eastern policies in 1942–1954. The author of the essay “The Mukri Kurds” apparently strived to maintain scholarly neutrality yet the facts and argumentation contained in the different variants of this study were consistently reviewed and added or omitted depending on the existing political situation. The paper raises the question about the subjectivity or autonomy of a scholar serving a government — something effectively dismissed and neglected in the work of Edward Said on the relationship between politics and scholarship in the field of Middle Eastern studies.

A View of Sydney: The Taylor Panorama Reassessed

In the 1820s British society had the opportunity to experience life in Sydney, New South Wales through the publication of a panorama of the military officer, Major James Taylor (1785–1829). The 1823 aquatints of his watercolours presented views of Sydney from the military area on the present-day Observation Hill. As well as communicating Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s progressive vision for a colony that was advancing beyond its status as a penal settlement, it presented its audience with narratives of life in Sydney. Taylor’s panorama survives through four preparatory watercolours and the three elegant aquatints. This publication drew sufficient interest to prompt subsequent editions in France and Britain. By the early twentieth century the work was valued in Australia as a record of the fabric of colonial Sydney, with later researchers discussing Taylor’s representation of various participants’ roles in the fledgling settlement. Analysis of Taylor’s study and its publication in Europe provides further insight into his composition and its reception, as well as furthering our understanding of life in New South Wales at that time.

A View of Sydney: The Taylor Panorama Reassessed

In the 1820s British society had the opportunity to experience life in Sydney, New South Wales through the publication of a panorama of the military officer, Major James Taylor (1785–1829). The 1823 aquatints of his watercolours presented views of Sydney from the military area on the present-day Observation Hill. As well as communicating Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s progressive vision for a colony that was advancing beyond its status as a penal settlement, it presented its audience with narratives of life in Sydney. Taylor’s panorama survives through four preparatory watercolours and the three elegant aquatints. This publication drew sufficient interest to prompt subsequent editions in France and Britain. By the early twentieth century the work was valued in Australia as a record of the fabric of colonial Sydney, with later researchers discussing Taylor’s representation of various participants’ roles in the fledgling settlement. Analysis of Taylor’s study and its publication in Europe provides further insight into his composition and its reception, as well as furthering our understanding of life in New South Wales at that time.