A Sociology of the Total Organization

Atomistic Unity in the French Foreign Legion

Mikaela Sundberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138702073
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317186601
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Labour Economics
• Index: Economics

Examining the organization of everyday life inside the regiments of the French Foreign Legion, this book takes its theoretical point of departure in the notion of the voluntary total organization; that is to say, an institution that constitutes a geographically delimited place of residence and work in which inmates are voluntarily separated from the outside world, leading an enclosed, formally administered life. Informed by a modified version of Goffman's original concept of the total institution, A Sociology of the Total Organization untangles the Foreign Legion and the ways in which different kinds of social orders interplay there. With a focus on regimental life, the author characterizes the armed forces not only as a total organization, but also as a greedy one, seeking undivided loyalty and the incorporation of all social roles within its bounds. Against this understanding, the book draws on rich ethnographic work to develop the notion of atomistic unity, the ideal relational condition that exists in the military, in which individuals commit to a unit and articulate ties with individuals on an impersonal basis, grounded in the belief in a greater whole. A detailed and empirically grounded study of the mechanisms in which the Foreign Legion not only cuts members' ties to people outside the organization, but also restricts the creation and maintenance of ties among its members, this book shows how atomistic unity is not limited to greedy organizations such as the military, but applies to a variety of collectivist settings. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and anthropology with interests in military life, social relations, social theory and the work of Goffman.

Chapter 1

Towards a Sociology of the Total Organization

Few organizations carry more national symbolic value than armies do. To enroll as a soldier may therefore seem like an odd job for an immigrant, but using foreigners in armies is “almost as old as warfare itself” (Fall 1961, p.280, see also Preston, 1975, Percy, 2007). Because single-nationality armed forces are contingent upon the formation of nation states, they are relatively new in a historical perspective—for example, the gradual “nationalization” of the European armed forces started in the mid-15th century (Mjøset and van Holde 2002, p.10).¹ Among contemporary national forces, the use of foreigners to fill troops is therefore the exception rather than the rule, but the French Foreign Legion (légion étrangère) is the most distinctively national yet also multinational armed force unit, relying on foreign migration since its very foundation.²

In 1831, King Louis Philippe established the French Foreign Legion to deal with the unemployment crisis and “usefully employ” the large group of refugees on French territory, but also to enable rapid and extended recruitment of foreign, more expendable, soldiers (Hallo, [1994] 2007, pp.17–18). While this notorious élite military force has the reputation of being a hideout for criminals, it is also an organization in which patterns of the global labor market and related migration are clearly manifest. Despite the fact that the Legion certainly attracts young men seeking combat experience and the smell of gunpowder rather than a job, high unemployment rates in Eastern Europe and the reduction in armed forces personnel in former Soviet Union states are the more likely reasons for the fact that men of Eastern European origin constitute about a quarter (24 percent) of the Legion population and that almost a fifth (18 percent) have migrated from former Soviet Union states. There is also an increasing number of members with a non-European background more generally. For example, 20 percent of members come from the African continent, 8 percent from South America, and 8 percent from South-East Asia. The current composition of nationalities is strikingly different from that of earlier periods. Prior to the 1960s, the Legion consisted primarily of foreigners from neighboring countries. For example, during its first three decades, German speakers represented about a third of the member population and the German proportion reached its peaks just before 1930 and around the 1950s.³ Since then, there has been a steady decline in German members, who currently represent only one percent of the total population. Anglophones, mostly from Great Britain, also became a notable linguistic group for a period of time. Their representation peaked in the early 1980s, when they represented about 20 percent of the population (Hallo, [1994] 2007, pp.152–153). This is commonly regarded as an effect of British soldiers enrolling after having fought in the Falklands War, and as an example of how the Foreign Legion’s recruitment mirrors international politics (see also Fall, 1961, pp.281, Gilbert, 2009, pp.18–19). At present, men from Western European countries make up 22 percent of the force, and two thirds of these are French.

The heterogeneity of the Foreign Legion, with members from 144 different countries, is greater than ever, but the Foreign Legion is certainly not a “multicultural” project that promotes diversity of customs and traditions. It is better characterized as a French integration project (see Pouvreau, 2008). French is the official language and French citizenship is possible to obtain after a certain length of service. The Legion is also formally part of the French Army, and its regiments belong to different brigades of the Army, at the same time as the Legion is also a distinct unit. For example, the Legion has a separate recruitment process and certain special rules of service for its members. Prior to Algeria’s independence from France in 1962, there was also a significant difference, in that every Legion regiment was located in Algeria.⁴ Since then, most regiments have been stationed in southern France, but there are also bases at Corsica, Abu Dhabi, and in French Guiana. At present, about 6,750 men, commanded by about 400 French officers, serve at one of the Legion’s eleven regiments.

According to one of the Legion’s recruitment slogans, enrollment offers “a new opportunity for a new life,” and based on the popular myth about the Legion, one may perhaps think that this “new life” will be filled with frequent (perhaps obscure) operational missions. Such events certainly represent some of what life in the Foreign Legion involves. Yet the focus of this book is on everyday life in the regimental barracks, where legionnaires spend most of their time performing tasks that are often considered menial and mundane.

From Total Institution to Total Organization

My point of departure in writing this book is the fact that the Legion is an excellent example of a contemporary total institution. In total institutions, people both live and work together, creating a setting with particular conditions for the people inside of them. In his seminal work Asylums, Goffman (1961) defined total institutions as geographically delimited places of residence and work, where inmates are separated from the outside world, thus leading an enclosed, formally administered life. There is also great distance between the inmates and the staff, who govern and work with the inmates.

The Legion’s total institutional character derives primarily from the fact that most first-contract members lead a life within bounded regimental areas. Regimental living is extremely regulated. When and where to exercise, work, eat, and sleep and which uniform to wear, when to wear it, and how to wear it are but a few examples of what is regulated in Legion members daily life, which is structured around routine roll-calls, assemblies, and rituals. Regimental living is also monitored. Time is spent in the presence of others, and it is difficult to move anywhere within the regiment without being observed, and thus, potentially asked what one is doing, or having to ask a superior for permission to do something.

Among others, Frevert (2004, p.3) noted that “the way the armed forces function, even today, resembles Erving Goffman’s notion of ‘total institutions’” but the similitude with total institutions is often only mentioned, only rarely explored in any depth. Considering that, in military life, situations of battle constitute the exceptions, far removed from mundane living in the barracks, such an analysis is vital to understanding the armed forces. At the same time, total institutions that people have voluntarily chosen to enter have attracted less attention than have coercive total institutions. Goffman (1961) paid little attention to total institutions created for particular working tasks justified on the basis of instrumental grounds, such as military organizations, and this has also been the case in subsequent sociological research.⁵ Importantly, such venues are likely to present a slightly different dynamic compared to those that people have been forced into (see also Goffman, 1961, pp.88–92).

For example, resistance probably differs in settings that people have voluntarily chosen to enter as compared to those people have been forced into. In the latter milieus, it is clear how inmates should behave, but after learning the official rules of the institution, they acquire tactics and strategies to “work the system” and develop a culture of resistance. This “underlife,” as Goffman called it, includes inmates’ own culture of recruitment, socialization and mechanisms of informal social control, and it is distinctive given the rules and hierarchy that make any sign of resistance visible. Yet no one expects a prisoner to agree with how prison life is organized, even less to enjoy it, and opposition makes no difference for exit. In voluntary organizations, however, there is in principle an option of exit or voice, even if either exit or voice is ordinarily the dominant reaction mode (Hirschman, 1970). If a member is in principle free to leave when his commitment expires, those who stay are expected to show at least some compliance and loyalty. This is an urgent issue with regard to the Legion as a military organization, where obedience and loyalty are key concerns. In addition, identification with, for example, the role as a soldier or with military values may even be one of the reasons for joining a military organization. In the mental hospital in Goffman’s study, there was no striving to uphold the inmate identity. Patients sought small cliques and personal friends together with whom they defined themselves as normal, and all other patients as crazy.

Another way in which the Legion, as a professional armed forces unit, may differ from total institutions that take care of prisoners or mental patients concerns the division of inmates and staff. Indeed, this sharp division has been considered to be a defining feature of total institutions, but armed forced units are required to unify, at least when they face a common enemy. At the same time, military organizations have a distinctive rank system that separates members. Regimental living is stratified into many levels of subordinate and superior relations, and in the Legion, officers, non-commissioned officers (NCOs), and enlisted men are the three basic strata, including strictly divided sub-ranks. How do these divisions affect the need for simultaneous unification?

We should also consider the concept of total institution itself. Early conceptual critique of Goffman targeted empirical variations in the totality of institutions (see, for example, Wallace, 1971, Bennett, 1963), whereas more recent work has suggested other terms, for example “permeability” (Quirk, Lelliott, and Seale, 2006), to account for the fact that some total institutions are not as completely cut off from the outside world as they used to be. However, this critique is unfruitful in the sense that totality is what makes these places special. Totality is the principal defining feature of the sites Goffman discussed using his ideal typical concept. It is rather Goffman’s unclear definition of institution and subsequent interchangeable use of institution and organization that are problematic.

In one of the very few conceptual developments that lifts its gaze from particular cases of total institutions, Scott (2011, pp.14–16) explicitly discussed Goffman’s unclear definition of institution, but with a view to justifying it rather than to provide an alternative.⁶ Scott (2011) discussed various settings such as therapeutic clinics, self-help groups, and military camp-like institutions as examples of reinventive institutions: sites of identity work that people seek for individual change and cultivation of a new social identity. Compared to Goffman’s original work on total institutions, Scott’s (2011) concept shifts focus from material sites and social structures to performativity and self-identity. This book moves in a different direction by focusing on the organization and the conditions that certain (total) organizational structures create for other social relations to emerge and persist inside of or alongside them—relations that the organization may depend on and profit from, as well as conflict with.

By taking its theoretical point of departure in total organizations, this book provides a fresh organizational perspective on studies of total institutions as well as on studies of the armed forces. Here, organization is defined as “a decided order in which people use elements that are constitutive of formal organizations” (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011, p.85). The elements that are the objects of decisions are membership, hierarchy, rules, monitoring, and sanctions. On a more abstract level, these elements correspond to five different dimensions of social orders. Affiliation, power, expectations, transparency, and consequences (of fulfillment or failure to live up to expectations) are five relational dimensions according to which the elements of institutions and networks, two other forms of social orders, can also be defined (see Ahrne, 2014). The details of each element remain to be explained and explored in the forthcoming analysis, presented briefly in the outline of the book (see below). At this point, it is most important to emphasize the general differences between the social orders and therefore that institutions are defined as taken-for-granted, hence undecided informal orders. It is difficult to trace their history, because they were not founded on the basis of a decision. It is therefore also impossible to say that institutions function differently than they should, because they do not result (or do no longer seem to result) from decision-making that has aimed at establishing any particular order. This distinguishes institutions from organizations. Organizations are attempted orders that often “fail” in the sense that they rarely turn out the way decision-makers intended them to. For example, members violate rules or sanctions do not have the effect they are supposed to have. Networks share with institutions the character of being emergent structures, which therefore cannot “fail” (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011, p.90). A genuine network consists of a web of relationships among people who know each other in one way or another (Granovetter, 1973). In this sense, networks share with organizations the character of being social structures in which individuals hold positions. However, because affiliation to a network is based on spontaneous ties among individuals, these individuals can determine for themselves who will be included in the network. No one is responsible for managing it.

The conception of social relations introduced above structures the present analysis. Owing to their structural symmetry, these three types of social relations are comparable, enabling a coherent and systematic investigation of the interplay among relational elements, how they blend and reinforce one another, weaken and undermine each other, or transform from one into another (cf. Ahrne and Brunsson, 2011, pp.85, 97). This is one of the principal reasons for choosing this framework.⁷

The Legion is the case for the present inquiry, where the more well-delimited concepts of organization, institution, and network are used to replace Goffman’s notions of “institution,” “underlife” and “inmate culture.” These notions indicate that even in a total organization such as a mental hospital or prison, institutional cultures and interpersonal relations also form side-by-side within an organization. In this book, the definition of the Legion as a total organization is the point of departure, and organization is therefore the reference point for the analysis. It is in relation to organization that taken-for-granted conceptions and practices as well as interpersonal relations are investigated. “Organization is already there,” as Ahrne (1990, pp.6–7) put it, and organization, institution, and network are therefore of unequal importance to the analysis. Three important consequences of this are the following.

First, I will hereafter refer to members rather than to legionnaires. Member is a more neutral, precise, but at the same time more general term that is connected to organization. In Becker’s (2003) tribute to Goffman’s (1961) neutral language of presentation of total institutions, he emphasizes the need to consider what we call the things we study and warns us that to “choose the terms used by the people who ‘own’ the territory, and therefore choose the perspective associated with those terms, I let my analysis be shaped by conventional social arrangements and the distribution of power and privilege they create” (Becker, 2003, p.661). To understand the meaning of the term “legionnaire”, it is therefore important to pay attention to how it is used among members and officers, but not to buy into the perspective that this usage reflects. For this purpose, it is essential to choose a different term. It should also be specified that this book focuses on members, referring to those who entered the Legion as “legionnaires,” enlisted men and non-commissioned officers (NCOs), who have passed through the specific basic training organized by the Legion.⁸ This path differs from the officer corps of the Legion, who have graduated from the military academy Ecole Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr.⁹ It has traditionally been considered a great honor for French officers to serve in the Legion, something granted only to the best Saint-Cyr graduates, but these officers usually work in the Legion (as opposed to in the regular French Army units) for only part of their career. The officiers à titre étrangers (OTEs), “officers under foreign title,” are exceptions. At present there are about 40 OTEs in the Legion who have started their careers as enlisted men, but after promotion to NCO and 15 years of service or more, have been nominated the rank of officer.¹⁰ OTEs never make up more than 10 percent of the officer corps in the Legion, and in contrast to regular officers, who might be deployed anywhere in the Army, OTEs were until recently guaranteed to stay in the Legion.

Second, organizational boundaries set the limit for the present analysis. In principle, the lives of members before or after their membership in the Legion are beyond the scope of this book. This also follows from the focus on the organization of everyday life at the regiments. Thus, the book is less concerned with individual reasons for joining the Legion, and more concerned with why members stay and do not leave, that is, less with questions of recruitment than with retention.

Third, and related to the second point, is that the institutional analysis is limited by the Legion as organization, and does not extend to, for example, the Legion as part of a broader “military institution” or the French armed forces. The Legion as an institution becomes somewhat of a residual category to organization—the primary concept in this scheme. In line with our interest in the dynamics of social relations, the presentation of institutional elements generally focuses on how they contrast with the corresponding organizational elements. The relation between the organizational and institutional order and the balance between their individual elements are empirical questions. In this book, their congruencies and tensions reveal the dynamics of the Legion as a specific setting, but also provide more general knowledge about identifying the reasons for and effects of such a dynamics.

Greediness and Atomistic Unity

Although this book focuses on regimental life rather than combat, it is imperative to consider that the armed forces demand of their members something that other professional organizations do not: a readiness to participate in combat, including readiness to use physical force and risk losing one’s life in battle. These demands are likely to presuppose great loyalty to the organization and this, in turn, is a principal indication of why armed forces could be characterized as a greedy. Greediness is a characteristic of total organizations that people have voluntarily chosen to enter, and where obligations regarding members’ loyalty are maintained through symbolic, not only physical, boundaries. Both totality and greediness expand organizational control over their members, but they do so in slightly different ways.¹¹ A principal concern is relate...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Towards a Sociology of the Total Organization
• 2 Belonging to the Legion
• 3 Formal Rank, Status, and the Strength of Many Ties
• 4 Blending Relational Expectations
• 5 Sources of Knowledge
• 6 Enforcement and Exclusion
• 7 The Dynamics of Organization, Institution, and Networks
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index