Becoming Cadets Aptitude, Discipline, and Pre-preprofessionalSocializationin the Swedish Military Academy

Abstract

Military academies are central for the education, socialization, and disciplining of future officers. These sites teach officer students a way of acting and performing that is particular to military command culture, while also providing them with a sense of commitment to and belonging with the profession. This article is concerned with the process of joining military academies, and the socio professional and historical dynamics that are at play when individuals enter the specific role of the cadet. It studies the initial boarding school period in Swedish military academy by drawing on ethnographic work and archival material documenting the everyday life of Swedish cadets. The analysis is organized by Goffman’s theory of total institutions, focusing particularly on the role dispossession and “mortification of the self ” that occurs when new intakes enter such institutions and become treated as objects of people-work. The analysis finds that military academies stand in tension with how military education has been academized in recent years. Whereas the academic components of officer education seek to foster scholarly values such as progressiveness, independence, and plurality in knowledge production, the military academy rather struggles to preserve contrasting values such as military discipline and homogeneity, and to reproduce conservative officer ideals rooted in the institution’s aristocratic history.