The project provided a theoretically-informed, in-depth ethnographic account of a phenomenon that did not receive scholarly attention so far. The project created a unique interface between the thematic areas of military studies and volunteering research.
The study revealed that the interest of the Israeli military in conscripted activities goes beyond mere reputation management. Conscripted volunteering can be analyzed as a tool inspired by corporate techniques of reputation management that enables the Israeli military to engage in what is termed as ‘social’ missions in a manner that does not contradict its neoliberal tendencies, and by doing so nurturing the military’s public legitimacy. However, the research results demonstrate that conscripted volunteering is also a powerful affective tool that works to mould soldiers’ subjecthood. Engaging soldiers in activities organized by the military that are consensually perceived as ‘good’, strengthened their belief in the military’s morality despite its routine actions that are embedded in violence and oppression, and thus consolidating soldiers’ ‘moral coherence’. The military is thus interested in conscripted volunteering as a mechanism that produced engaged militarized subjects that are disposed to participate in routinized labour that may carry with it moral doubts.
While ‘volunteering’ is often constructed as an ultimate expression of ‘doing good’, it has become an object of interest, particularly with the rise of neoliberalism in the 1990s, even to actors whose moral qualities are dubious: from corporations trying to engage their employees in programs of corporate volunteering to militaries engaging soldiers in ‘conscripted volunteering’ activities, as described in this research project. As the project results demonstrate, volunteering can in fact be aligned with militarization processes through the rising domain of ‘conscripted volunteering’. The exploration of this domain assists in unsettling the often-naturalized connection between ‘volunteering’ and ‘morality’ or ‘virtue’ and in examining critically the role that ‘volunteering’ plays in contemporary societies. Furthermore, the project problematizes the scholarly and popular tendency to identify non-governmental or civil society organizations as autonomous environments for ‘doing good’, by examining their alignment with military interests. As the monograph that will result from the research project demonstrates, the increasing promotion and popularity of the notion of ‘volunteering’ can cohere with and support militarization processes, policing efforts and violent endeavours. Exploring such alignments, as this research project demonstrate, contributes to the development of an alternative theoretical framework to the traditional distinction between the military and civic spheres.
