Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Social psychological research on general issues pertaining to national representation and identity is frequently justified in relation to the specific case of the role of national identity in international conflict and war. It is therefore somewhat surprising that little research has in fact explicitly addressed the relationship between the self, national identity and military service. In this paper I explore how a sample of civilians and British army soldiers in England construe the ways in which attachment to, or identification with, the 'nation' may be implicated in military service. Using qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews, it is shown that whereas soldiers typically oriented to 'serving the country' as an activity which did not depend upon a heightened sense of national identification or sentiment, civilians frequently attributed such sentiment to soldiers in order to explain why they engaged in military service. Furthermore, a trend is identified whereby civilians often represented 'country' in terms of government, such that 'serving the country' was essentially treated as 'serving the government'. In contrast, soldiers were more likely to employ a representation of military service as involving a commitment to country-as-monarchy. These findings are discussed in relation to the political and ideological heritage of the British army, as well as in the context of the war in Iraq. Moreover, it is argued that approaches which treat national categories exclusively in terms of social identity may not be able to capture the complexity of ordinary accounts of military service and 'nation' or 'country'.