Citizen,Soldier,or Citizen-Soldier? Negotiating Identity in the US National Guard

Introduction

Reserve soldiers have been conceptualized as being structurally, processually, and ideologically situated between two very different worlds with competing norms, values, and standards of behavior. ¹ Viewing the situation of reservists in this way raises many important questions. As Hawkins ² has laid out, American military and civilian worlds are based around fundamentally contradictory cultural premises. While American civilian society values atomization, pursuit of comfort, freedom of choice, equality, and readiness for discussion and compromise, military culture emphasizes the contradictory values of unity, endurance, obedience, hierarchy, and readiness for violence, characteristics which are essential for survival in combat. ³ As a result of these opposing premises, military and civilian cultural ways of being and their associated identities are also very different and potentially contradictory. An individual may choose military life as their dominant belonging by joining the active forces and thereby reduce the conflict or need to transition between these competing value systems. But how does the reservist who lives simultaneously in both the military and the civilian worlds manage these dual, and at times competing sets of premises in their daily lives and in terms of their identity conceptions? What does reserve identity tell us about the larger meanings of the citizen-soldier role in the current US context? These are not merely questions of theoretical or historical interest. A focus on identity and its construction has been cited as directly related to the quality of reserve experiences. ⁴ If an individual perceives a greater fit with reserve identities it is “more likely the individual will join reserve military service, will remain in reserve military service, and will form cohesive bonds with group members, contributing to readiness and offering a buffer against combat stressors.” ⁵ For these reasons, a focus on identity is important from a very practical standpoint because of its implications for policy regarding the use of the reserves and for developing programs to mitigate deployment stress among reserve soldiers. ⁶

This article derives from a doctoral dissertation project which examines from an anthropological perspective the current situation of US Army National Guard soldiers and how they handle dual belonging in the civilian and military worlds, both in terms of the day-to-day realities of their lives and in regard to their identity conceptions. The goal was to ethnographically examine the situation of National Guard members in the current US context and to tell the stories of the members and their families. Analysis was conducted within the context of a theoretical focus on the individual agent engaging in processes of identity negotiation and an examination of how individual agency is modified as it intersects with institutions of power. The current article focuses specifically on the negotiation of identity in the National Guard and how it relates to current conceptions of citizen-soldiery in the United States. I examine the citizen-soldier identity as a cultural construct deriving from dual belonging in civilian and military worlds, a focus which speaks to belonging in groups with divergent worldviews. The goals of this article are twofold; first, to examine the processes individuals use to negotiate the dual identities of citizen and soldier, and second to extrapolate from that conclusions about current meanings of citizen-soldiery and its implications.

While the National Guard as an institution labels its members as “citizen-soldiers,” individuals vary greatly in their interpretation of this label and in the extent to which they self-identify as civilians, soldiers, or some combination of the two. Indeed, what citizen-soldier means has changed throughout American history. Griffith ⁷ examined the evolution of the “citizen-soldier” identity in the United States over time, arguing that reservists’ identity conceptions change as geopolitical events bring about structural changes in the reserve forces. Beginning with World War II, Griffith delineates six identities associated with reserve service: (1) the obliged-conscripted citizen soldier (World War II era) who served because of an imminent need for defense and a sense of obligation, and maintained a core identity as a civilian; (2) The weekend warrior (Vietnam and Cold War)—the traditional Vietnam-era image of the citizen soldier who served as a reservist to avoid duty in Vietnam and viewed reserve service as a part-time weekend activity that is social and leisurely in nature and involves little commitment; (3) The instrumental volunteer (post-Vietnam and Cold War) who joined as a volunteer, but often under an occupational model, seeking low levels of commitment and compensation in the form of pay and benefits; (4) the identity seeker (1990s), who sought to give legitimacy and value to reserve service; (5) the soldier warrior (Gulf War), an individual who was a professional, ready to fight, and deeply committed to military service and missions; and finally (6) the conservative ideologue, who adhered to a conservative political philosophy, had similar political attitudes to their peers and served out of a deep sense of obligation. In spite of the diversity of reserve identities that have evolved through time, these various reserve identities still do not capture the full range of reservists’ identities present currently in the National Guard, as I encountered them during my fieldwork. Through an examination of individual identity constructions among National Guard soldiers, I tease out some of the current meanings of citizen-soldiery adding another facet to the variations on citizen-soldier identities described by others. I also demonstrate the ways in which reserve identities are not only a product of geopolitical events, but are also actively constructed and negotiated by individuals using three main processes outlined in the next section. This focus examines the construction of reserve identities from the “bottom up.”

Balancing Dual Cultural Belonging

Individuals in all social contexts engage in the management of dual and/or multiple social and cultural identities. From a review of the anthropological, sociological, and social psychology literature, individuals engage in three main processes to create a sense of unity from their multiple belongings and possible identities: (1) behavioral practice; (2) spatial ⁸ displacement; and (3) narrativity. These processes play out in different ways in different contexts and become relatively more important in cases where the dual identities are contradictory and potentially conflicting, such as in the case of reserve service. While these processes have largely been dealt with separately, in reality, individuals actively draw upon all three as the means for negotiating dual belongings. I demonstrate through the ethnographic evidence some of the ways in which individuals use these processes, as described below, specifically in the management of civilian and military identities.

Ethnographic Evidence: Citizen, Soldier, or Citizen-Soldier?

In the case of citizen-soldiers, the categories of civilian and military are key identifiers as individuals form identity conceptions and come to view themselves as civilians, soldiers or some combination of the two. The data presented here derive from eighteen months (2008–2009) of anthropological ethnographic fieldwork with currently serving National Guard soldiers in one region of the United States. During in-depth semistructured interviews (both with individuals and in groups), I asked general questions about individual experiences in the National Guard as well as specifically how they saw themselves, as civilians, as soldiers or as some combination of the two. I interviewed forty-eight individuals from several different National Guard units; all but three were enlisted soldiers. Ten of the participants were female.

For the purposes of this analysis, I place the citizen-soldier identity along a spectrum, from a consideration of oneself solely as a civilian to a self-identification solely as a soldier. As with all spectrums, the true endpoints are ideal types that do not exist in reality, and there is a significant area of overlap wherein individuals consider themselves to be some combination of both civilian and soldier in various configurations. As Griffith ³⁶ noted, according to social identity theory this self-identification is highly contextual, and changes frequently. However, by artificially freezing my participants’ identity conceptions in time, I derive some conclusions regarding the general conditions surrounding their relationships to the citizen-soldier identity.

Multiple factors influence individuals’ self-identification along the citizen-soldier spectrum, including but not limited to, length of service, prior active duty status, strength of civilian ties and obligations, and deployment experiences. In general however, regardless of the presence or absence of other factors, deployment veterans tended to speak about their relationship to the military and to the soldier identity in ways that were subtly different from those who had not experienced deployment. The difference is a matter of degree, rather than of kind; National Guard members with deployment experience indicated experiences, behaviors, and self-identifications that more strongly aligned them with a “warrior” identity, and spoke of the more enduring and pervasive nature of this identity and its associated ways of being. The experience of deployment appears to create a shift in the relationship to the citizen-soldier identity that is difficult to quantify or categorize along hard and fast criteria, but which was apparent in participants’ discourse.

The impact of recent Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) deployments on reservists has been examined as a significant element of their experience in recent years, because it departs substantially from the model of reserve service in the pre-9/11 era. ³⁷ It is only natural that these experiences will have greatly influenced the identity conceptions of individual reservists. While, as Griffith describes, changes in the use of the reserve forces as a result of Total Force policy beginning with the First Gulf War have allowed for the possibility that reserve soldiers might identify as “soldier-warriors,” ³⁸ the actual deployment experiences of individual reservists have an important impact on the extent to which they are able to understand and incorporate this identity into their sense of self. The different identity conceptions of deployed Guard members also indicate an emphasis on different processes of identity management. For these reasons, I analyze identity in the National Guard by dividing responses along the lines of deployment experience. Table 1 provides an overview of key points in the following discussion; illustrating prominent themes, processes of identity negotiation, and examples of each specific to the negotiation of citizen-soldier identity.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Overview of Identity Negotiation in the National Guard.

Deployment status	Relationship to soldier identity	Prominent themes related to identity	Primary processes of identity management	Examples of how processes are used in negotiation of civilian and military identities
Nondeployed Guard members	Soldier as “just one part” of one’s identity Soldier as mainly secondary, but becomes dominant at specific times in specific settings	Living a “double life” Most of time spent in civilian world, so hard to always feel connected to soldier identity Being “in uniform” signals assumption of soldier identity	Behavioral practice Spatial displacement	While “in uniform” report change in posture, management styles, and attitudes—“feeling different” “in here” (armory) versus “out there” (civilian world)
Deployment veterans	Soldier internalized Soldier habitus and ways of being are more enduring and must be reconciled with civilian context	“Always in the back of my head” Soldier accepted as identity because they have done the “real” work of soldiers	Narrativity	“Just a job” Putting all pieces together within one story Narrative separation of violence and deployment from who they are as a person

Identity before Deployment: “Just One Part”

Of the forty-eight soldiers I interviewed, twenty-four had not yet experienced deployment as a National Guard member. In general, the data suggest that National Guard members with no deployment experience had different relationships to their service than those who had deployed. Though this was not universal and other factors, such as prior active duty service, full-time military employment and personal senses of duty and patriotism intervened, generally speaking, a truly part-time experience was qualitatively different from an intensive full-time immersion through deployment. Understandably, given the frequent use of the Guard in deployments since 2003, these individuals also tended to be those with the least time in service. Of the twenty-four nondeployed individuals, twenty-one had served five years or less in the National Guard at the time of the interview and fifteen served two years or less. The tendency was therefore also for these individuals to be younger (in their twenties) and single.

There is a wide variety in identity conceptions that arise from part-time service and individuals vary in the extent to which they adopt the soldier aspect of their identity into their everyday sense of who they are. Some felt disconnected from their military identity due to the intermittent nature of their participation:

Others felt more of a connection between their civilian and military identities, noting that while they predominantly felt they were civilians, their soldier identity was always present:

Predominantly however, military and civilian were discussed as categories that are mostly separated. Since nondeployed M-Day Guard members operate for the majority of their time in the civilian world, soldier is often seen as a secondary or alternate identity that becomes dominant during specific times. While many expressed the sense that they considered themselves to be equally citizens and soldiers, it was rare for someone to express that they always felt themselves to be exclusively soldiers rather than civilians.

This separation is reflected in the identity management processes nondeployed Guard members use; Guard members who have never deployed appear to rely more upon behavioral practice and spatial displacement to negotiate their dual belonging. While the very act of telling their story is an act of narration, the key elements these individuals use to justify their self-identifications are not the narrative itself, but physical concepts related to the metaphor of “being in uniform” and being in the armory versus being in the “outside world” (in the civilian world).

Nondeployed Guard members speak of taking on new traits while in uniform and many discussed the importance of the uniform for their feeling of belonging as soldiers.

Many told me that they noticed they stand a little straighter when in uniform or carry themselves differently. Bruce expressed that when the soldiers went out together after drill, they maintained their military composure because “you’re wearing a uniform that represents something. No one wants to see a bunch of crazy military people.” Lauren was best able to articulate these changes in her own behavior,

When I put on my uniform, my posture’s better. I say things differently….I have to present myself differently and I’m a little more hooah, hooah…I take the stairs all the time…If there’s somebody who wants to compete on something then I’m all for it. I sort of have to prove that I’m tough and what not….I do notice that I am swearing a bit more. It’s frightening. But I think I have a little more energy. I’m a little more focused that first Monday after drill….But I do notice…like standing up straight, pretty much at the position of attention at my boss’s desk…My friends will tell me that there are moments where I am walking and then moments when I march. Like sometimes I will do it, and sometimes I’ll just be normal. These are all unconscious things…

John explicitly discussed the sense among Guard members of a need to change one’s clothing to change one’s self-identification.

For me transitioning between the military persona and the civilian persona…for me personally there’s a line there; it’s a really fine line…I’ve never had any issue with transitioning between the two…I think having that uniform, being in the military should supplement who you are, should add to who you are, should carry over into your daily life…But I could definitely see why people would think that way [that they are living two separate lives as separate people] if they never did active duty…they’re not that way Monday through Friday. There’s 28 days out of the month where they’re not in uniform and then they have to put this uniform on…and they’re searching for what they’re trying to become or who they are…and it’s two days… [But] it’s not just about two days a month. You need to be able to, in the event of; you’re there in the event of.

Participants almost universally expressed that wearing the uniform required a more professional demeanor, more outright displays of respect and a business-like manner of doing what needs to be done and doing it well. Being “in uniform” becomes a euphemism for all behaviors related to inhabiting the soldier identity.

This physical transformation is also expressed in other ways besides just the changing of clothing. At least three individuals told me they allow their facial hair to grow between drills maintaining a goatee or at least some “scruff,” and then once a month the night before drill would shave completely. The process of changing surface appearance helps the individual to make changes in other behaviors, such as body language and spoken language use.

Nondeployed Guard members also frequently suggested a sense that they were living double lives or a sense of being in two worlds.

This suggests that soldier is not a primarily dominant identity for nondeployed Guard members. Rather members expressed that it was just a part of who they were in a configuration of personal identity that included civilian job identity, family roles, and other sources of self-definition. As Toby told me, “I consider myself a regular person. At his job….part-time warrior.”

Joanne similarly emphasized a notion of behaving very differently in the civilian versus military world, noting that when she was home and out of uniform, she was able to be softer, more motherly, in some ways a feeling that was more natural for her, as she struggled to limit these tendencies when functioning in her position in the military. As she said, “But I have to you know, I don’t…unless they’re crying I don’t give them a hug…you know, I definitely have to pull back from who I normally am.” This sense of being a different person in the National Guard versus at home seemed to be most pronounced for the women who had children, likely because the cultural roles assigned to them as females and mothers differ much more drastically from the roles they assume as members of the military than is true for the men.

The decision concerning which cultural script to enact appears to take place on the level of practical consciousness. When in uniform, individuals intentionally ³⁹ exhibit a more professional demeanor. Physical changes of improved posture, the carriage of the hands and arms, language that is coarser and laden with acronyms and profanities are all learned behavioral practices that individuals use in the cultural setting of the military. In fact, it is partially the ability of individuals to successfully inhabit the habitus associated with military participation that allows them to claim full access to this identity. Individuals who do not adopt the military habitus in these ways are seen as being lesser soldiers. While military modes of being carry over into the civilian world at times, the individual is easily able to initiate a conscious modification of their habitus to fit the new context. As Jane told me,

the people at Guard are just like me. They’re students. They have like careers and jobs and other stuff in mind than the military… [I see myself] as both….when I’m doing my military stuff I feel more like a leader, feel more in control. I don’t know, I just get a different sense of who I am, and when I’m at school or anywhere else I’m just like relaxed, like lazy, watch TV, do my homework…it’s two different feelings. Hard to explain….sometimes I find myself like at school, if we’re doing group projects, I feel like I wanna boss people around and….I need to control these people, they’re my soldiers. I need to tell them what to do, but I never actually….it’s a feeling that I get sometimes that I wanna treat other people that way, but then I remember that I’m a calm person.

Nondeployed Guard members use behavioral practices in combination with spatial practices to organize belonging in the Guard family. Space is strictly separated, and being in the Guard is referred to as being “in here” versus being in the “outside world” or “out there,” clearly labeling the two realms as distinct spaces. Casey ⁴⁰ described the role of embodied practice in the making of place, saying “as places gather bodies in their midst in deeply enculturated ways, so cultures conjoin bodies in concrete circumstances of emplacement.” By enacting specific cultural ways of being in specific culturally constituted spaces, Guard members are able to negotiate their dual belonging. The combination of putting on the uniform and traveling to a different place to participate in military activities further helps the individual to not only assume an identity as a soldier but to keep that identity separate from civilian activities. Different clothing, different locations, and a different habitus contribute in significant ways to what makes soldier different from civilian in the Guard. By the same token, these two identities are integrated through “rituals of transition” ⁴¹ such as shaving and putting on the uniform and lingering habituses which carry over into the different cultural worlds.

These behavioral practices and spatial separations serve as significant factors in individuals’ negotiation of civilian and military identities. While individuals mainly view themselves as some combination of soldier and civilian, participants’ responses suggest that soldier is mainly a secondary identity that becomes dominant at specific times. The significance of “putting on the uniform” for a Guard member is that it allows them to externally mark a transition from one cultural habitus to the other. This external reminder allows Guard members to more easily adopt “soldier” as a temporarily dominant aspect of their identity. Soldier and civilian coexist and vary in terms of dominance, but are otherwise maintained without conscious difficulty. The issue for nondeployed soldiers becomes one of balancing, on a practical level, competing obligations in terms of time and energy, rather than one of needing to transition between or reconcile the differences of their two cultural worlds. The relatively small amount of time spent in the military cultural world limits for some their ability to fully accept the soldier identity for themselves. This is compounded by a frequently used linguistic phrase that describes drill weekends and training as “playing soldier.” Guard members use this phrase to refer to their own service, not necessarily in a pejorative way. Nonetheless, this narrative device relegates Guard participation to the realm of “pretend,” potentially lessening its significance as a source of personal identity when compared to other “real” areas of participation.

Identity after Deployment: Integrating “Soldier”

In contrast to the identity practices of nondeployed Guard members, the question of deploying the National Guard raises new issues and suggests a subtly different relationship to the citizen-soldier identity. Thomas et al. report that 8.5–14 percent of all soldiers (both active component and National Guard) returning from Iraq and Afghanistan experience posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression with serious functional impairment and 23–31 percent experience some impairment, while nearly half of all soldiers reported alcohol misuse and aggressive behavior. ⁴² Surveys conducted at three months postdeployment and again at twelve months showed that while these prevalence rates remained consistent for Active Component soldiers, they increased for National Guard soldiers over time. ⁴³ It has also been noted that suicide rates have recently been higher among National Guard members than active duty soldiers, though it is unclear the extent to which this is related to their deployment experiences or their reserve status. ⁴⁴ Riviere et al. report that National Guard soldiers have “unique post-deployment social and material concerns,” such as financial hardship, employer support, job loss, and concern for the effect of their absence on civilian coworkers that contribute to the higher rates of PTSD and depression other studies have found among Guard soldiers and reservists. ⁴⁵ A few recent studies have examined how identities may contribute to reservists’ adaptations to the stress of deployment. ⁴⁶ For example, Musheno and Ross speak of adaptive and struggling reservist identities, examining a variety of responses among reservists from a single unit to their deployment experiences, and attributing their identification with different identities largely to characteristics related to the reservists’ predeployment lives. ⁴⁷ Griffith discusses how individuals who view themselves as soldier–warriors, identity seekers, or conservative ideologues may be particularly well-suited to meeting the current demands of reserve service. ⁴⁸ However, to my knowledge, there has been very little attention to how deployment experiences contribute to reservists’ ability to accept these preexisting identities as part of their self-definition.

Twenty-three of the individuals I interviewed had experienced a deployment with the National Guard. With the exception of one individual, all deployed Guard members I interviewed were male. Like nondeployed Guard members, these deployment veterans also speak of the significance of putting on the uniform, pride in wearing the uniform and other metaphors related to practice to describe their sense of belonging to the soldier identity.

Similar to nondeployed reservists, some individuals also spoke of separating their two identities, and being a civilian in their civilian jobs and a soldier when at Guard. For example, Xavier told me:

There’s….when I’m a soldier I’m a soldier. I…and in the civilian life, I forget that I’m in the Army. People are like, “What’s your job?” you know, you’re supposed to list on like an application or whatever, I always put “[civilian job].” Like my wife will fill out something and she’ll put “[civilian job]/Army.” When I’m in the Army, it’s the Army. When I’m home it’s [civilian job]. They’re two different worlds.

In spite of this variation, there was a strong tendency among deployed Guard members to identify more strongly with the soldier aspect of their identity and to specifically reference their deployment experience as the turning point in their self-perception:

However, deployment does not universally lead to a stronger identification with the soldier identity. In fact, Nathan expressed that deployment had the opposite effect, causing him to develop stronger attachments to his civilian identity.

Nonetheless, there is clearly a universally felt impression that deployment generated a qualitatively different relationship to Guard service. As a significant life event that would remain forever in individuals’ memories, deployment changed the tone of the interviews and the relationship to the citizen-soldier label in ways in which none of my participants were able to explicitly articulate.

The experience of a deployment, and particularly a combat deployment, fundamentally alters the conditions of life in the civilian world, such that it is not possible to return to life exactly as it was before. The discourse also suggests that deployed Guard members’ ability to maintain that separation and mark it with a uniform is challenged. This is because soldier is no longer something to be “played” and has now become a very real element of experience. Individuals appear to more fully accept themselves as real soldiers, leading this identity to be internalized to a greater degree and therefore become more integral to their core sense of who they are as individuals. As Ben-Ari ¹ noted, deployment is a significant factor in reservists’ ability to reconcile their civilian and military identities. Soldiers and counselors speak of finding a “new normal” postdeployment, rather than “returning to normal,” implying that the sense of oneself as a soldier can never be completely left behind, necessitating the formulation of new ways of being. This is partly a matter of a personal decision to embrace and accept oneself fully as a soldier, a term that is practice-based as defined by the soldiers themselves. In statements from both deployed and nondeployed members (see quotations above), individuals frequently express that it is their actual daily practice, their physical experiences, that form the basis for their perception of themselves as soldiers, rather than their beliefs, values, or the mere fact of their stated membership in the National Guard. This implies that being a soldier in name is viewed very differently from being a soldier in practice, and it is the practice of soldiering (full-time and in combat-like situations) that contributes to an individual’s acceptance of the label for themselves.

Joel: In my mind…I’m a soldier. Because, especially now that I do this full-time, you know. There’s a thing- mission first, family later and so on and so forth. No. You know, it’s always family first, mission after, to me, but I still consider myself, you know, I’m a soldier. You know, I am. I mean if I’m talking to Joe Schmo from around the way, I’m not gonna talk to him about the military but uh, yeah, I’m a soldier, all the time.

Kit, the spouse and mother of two deployed Guard members corroborated this:

The fact is that they’re actually deploying and becoming real soldiers. And I think the soldiers actually feel like they’re real soldiers now. Because they are actually doing what they’ve been training to do. But it’s all been ‘Let’s play soldier.’…I think this really meant for them, that ‘I’m a real soldier now.’ ‘I’ve got the uniform. I’ve got the gun. I carry it 24/7. I’m not just playing. I’m not two weekends out in the field, uh, drinking beer in the evening, you know’… Um…reality sets in…and I think we as the public and civilians, think of them as real soldiers now too.

Soldier, as a sense of who one is, is no longer a secondarily assumed or temporarily dominant role, but a central piece in the overall sense of one’s identity. While Guard members who have never deployed may still speak of strongly identifying as soldiers and exhibiting the behavioral traits associated with that identity in civilian settings, these carryovers are minor cultural missteps which cause little disruption in their civilian lives and are easily controlled. These conflicts of habitus are much more pronounced for deployment veterans, less easily resolved and impact their full belonging in civilian culture to a much greater degree. Lauren’s account of occasionally finding herself marching has minimal impact on her belonging in civilian society. However, other soldiers’ discussions about experiencing an automatic paranoia over daily activities of other civilians around them points to a more serious conflict of cultural behavioral norms. The following exchange between Scott and William is one example of the ways in which the soldier habitus carries over into civilian life:

Behavioral traits associated with being a soldier have become more ingrained as a default response and are therefore more likely to conflict with civilian norms.

Because this internalization of the soldier identity occurs to a greater degree, on a level of which the soldier himself or herself may not even be aware, surface mechanisms of identity management such as practice and spatial displacement are not as effective in reconciling these contradictory identities because the individual carries the deployment with him or her internally. They must negotiate a transition from one to the other in terms of daily behaviors and practices while allowing for the simultaneous existence of both in their sense of self. A few individuals explicitly addressed this internal conflict in their own experiences.

The issue is not one of balancing soldier and civilian but rather reconciling two integral coexistent components of self-identification which may not always coincide and may in some cases openly conflict and moderating a transition between them.

It is here that narrativity becomes significant as a means of rendering the experience and the soldier personality coherent within the individual’s life story and self-concept. As Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport note: “In narrating the story, they build a theory of events, attempt to resolve the discrepancy between what is expected and what has happened, and forge links between their own unstable situated selves.” ⁵¹

Ben-Ari’s insights are particularly apt for understanding this complexity because he described particular conditions of reserve service which are especially relevant. He discusses how soldiers serving during the Palestinian Intifada were asked to operate, not as soldiers, but as policemen and interact with civilians regularly in a morally ambiguous situation that was outside of the realm of normal military activities strictly defined. This is very similar to the situation of current National Guard members serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and therefore Ben-Ari’s characterization of the moral and personal challenges created by this situation is important for understanding the recent deployments’ effects on identity among Guard members,

Many soldiers refer to the wearing of uniforms on the first day of reserve duty as the donning of disguises, as the bearing of masks. What I would suggest is that this metaphor illuminates how the transition to soldier involves more than a “mere” transition to a new social role and its attendant norms and expectations. This is because the use of masks or disguises involves a special potential for behavior which is at one and the same time normatively different from civilian life and in a special sense also non-normative. ⁵²

He further argued that this use of masks allows “some reservists a legitimate license to behave in ways that they would not normally—that is, within the bounds of their everyday civilian life- associate with them-‘selves.’” ⁵³ Similarly, Guard members used a combination of various narrative techniques to help reconcile their identity as simultaneously civilian and soldier. In the same way that masking or othering allows for the enactment of behaviors outside of civilian norms, narrative helps render them coherent.

Individuals use narrative to reconcile their belonging in contradictory cultural worlds in a few different ways. More than one individual characterized their Guard service as “just a job,” in spite of the fact that they spent time overseas in combat situations where they were asked to kill others; a job duty that would not be required in any other employment setting. Ben-Ari’s ⁵⁴ note about Israeli reservists’ use of generic administrative and bureaucratic language is representative of another variation of this same process. As Xavier told me about his experiences:

No, it’s a job. I mean it’s a job like you would perform at any other job. You don’t have to readjust to go to work everyday. You know? And I never thought of it as any different than that. It wasn’t “I got called up to go to war, oh my god this is a horrible thing!” I joined infantry, what did I think I was going to? …

This rhetoric is also found in Jim’s and Nathan’s quotes above. The rendering of deployment experience in a narrative structure that reflects the way individuals speak about civilian employment in a nonviolent setting is also a mechanism to reduce the emotional and psychological impact of experience in such a vastly different cultural framework. This narrative process clearly functions well, as evidenced by the alternate case of Lou, whose civilian job was also in a violent setting, in a correctional facility. Since he had no nonviolent civilian employment narrative to draw from, he was less able to reduce the impact of his combat experiences and separate the violence of his deployments from his sense of who he is in civilian life and he expressed that this made it harder for him to transition after combat back into civilian culture.

Guard members’ ability to place their deployment experiences within the narrative of their larger life story also helped to reconcile the contradictions between the violence of their military roles and their nonviolent civilian roles. While reservists’ specific role in contributing to violence was not often addressed in my interviews, Xavier did specifically place his experiences within this context:

And everybody, everybody looks at you different anyways, because it’s [killing] an unnatural act. And the way I reason it is plain and simple, if you kill someone in the United States, you know, you’re a murderer. You kill a couple people, you’re a mass murderer. You kill a group of the same people, you’re a serial killer, and look how we treat every one of them. “That guy should die. He is a sick disgusting demented character.” Well guess where I am on the standard of that? I’ve killed a great bunch of people that are all the same person. All the same nationality, religion….that puts me into the serial killer timeframe. So do you really, really need to know what I’ve done? Because if it was outside the military you would look at me as a heinous monster. But because I did it under my country it’s acceptable? Truth of the matter is, war is ugly and nobody really needs to know….But I come home and I’m gonna do what I wanna do, you know, I’m gonna live my life, I’m gonna be happy. I’m not dwelling, I don’ t look back, I don’t regret it. It’s not a year wasted. It was a job. I left the job behind, now it’s time to go on with your life.

Xavier’s ability to narrate his story in this way plays a role in neutralizing competing identities simply through its placement of contradictions within one story. In spite of the fact that tension may remain between the different streams, the fact that they are rendered coherent within one narrative helps to diffuse the tension. Xavier has narratively separated the violence from the rest of his self-conception, allowing him to see himself as a loving caring father in his civilian life. Therefore, the very ability of a Guard soldier to speak within the same hour of conversation of his or her experiences on deployment and a civilian job and role as parent, helps to neutralize the potentially conflicting elements of life experience and their associated identities within a framework that links the two together.

Deployment veterans rely more heavily on narrative processes to reconcile their identities because of its ability to neutralize a more intensely felt contradiction between these two identities. This is especially true in the immediate aftermath of deployment when the soldier identity is most dominant and in most direct conflict with the surrounding civilian culture. As the combat habitus diminishes over time, so presumably does the conflict between civilian and military modes of being as the individual assumes a “new normal” within the civilian context that allows for their military experience to remain as a part of their life narrative and “soldier” to persist as integral to their self-concept.

Conclusions: Defining “Citizen-Soldier”

To conclude the discussion, the question remains to be answered, what does it mean to be a citizen-soldier in the current US context? As Steve told me when I informed him that I was examining how citizen-soldiers work out the balancing of civilian and military in their lives, “Okay. I think they’ve been doing it for what 240 years? I think it works.” Indeed, the long tradition of the citizen-soldier model is evidence that it does indeed “work.” This is partly because the definition of what it means to be a citizen-soldier currently is actually quite flexible. Griffith’s latest identified phases of reserve identity, those of the soldier warrior and the conservative ideologue are present in the modern day National Guard experience, but there is still more to be added to the picture to capture the full range of the experience. Not only is the definition of citizen soldier flexible, it is this very notion of flexibility and adaptability that appears to define a piece of the current conception of citizen-soldiery, adding a new facet to the identity of the citizen-soldier as an “adaptable jack of all trades.” To be a citizen-soldier, to claim that identity, means to be able to manage multiplicity, to remain committed to home, family and community, but be ready to serve, as a real competent soldier, whenever needed. Citizen-soldier, as perceived by my participants, is a legitimate label and the joining of citizen and soldier by a hyphen signifies what they see as a category of distinction to which few can claim access. The composite nature of the term reflects the composite nature of the identity category; the citizen-soldier is an ever fluctuating balance of both citizen and soldier, which in the current context results in a total that is viewed as greater than either of the component parts alone and allows them to describe themselves ⁵⁵ as achieving more than the ordinary citizen and proving more effective and adaptable than the regular soldier. As Steve told me, “we have parity with the active duty, sometimes we can even outperform the regular Army people.” This facet represents one additional modification to the Guard identity which will likely continue to evolve, as Griffith has described, ⁵⁶ in unforeseeable ways as the Guard experience changes as a result of emerging military needs.

As noted earlier, these observations are interesting not only theoretically but in a practical sense as well. Individual identification with and ability to reconcile dual civilian and military identities has direct impact on recruitment and retention. Additionally, individuals’ ability to successfully reintegrate into civilian life after deployment is partially a result of their ability to reconcile their civilian and military selves. An individual with a predominantly civilian identity conception may have a harder time reconciling deployment experiences than someone who fundamentally accepts the cultural identity associated with soldiering. Predeployment and postdeployment programming and screening initiatives might consider explicitly addressing the issue of identity, as a means of providing insight into how individuals might better negotiate the transition from civilian to deployed soldier and back to civilian. Recognition of the identity shifts and negotiation processes National Guard members encounter as a result of deployment and the stress this may cause them is key to meeting the needs of these individuals. The reintegration process needs to focus not only on screening for PTSD and other mental illnesses but also acknowledge in a more holistic sense the effects of such identity shifts on individuals’ ability to reassume their civilian lives and identities.

Discussions about belonging in the civilian world represent the continued value placed upon dominant US narratives that emphasize individual achievement and the pursuit of self-improvement, but ironically tie that achievement into an institution that emphasizes the collective and self-sacrifice. Conceptions of soldiery draw on discourses surrounding ideal masculine achievement in a combat context, as evidenced by the greater internalization and acceptance of the soldier aspect of identity after the experience of combat deployment, while simultaneously adopting the larger political discourse that justifies and legitimizes our participation in the current conflicts by representing soldiers as benevolent protectors and liberators separated from the “dirty” work of violence. Citizen-soldiers themselves draw upon these themes, maintaining an identity configuration which acknowledges that while they are necessarily involved in violence and are proud of that competence, that violence is an undesirable consequence of the greater good being served by their presence. Their military participation, and their conception of themselves as soldiers, is contingent upon their ability to act as individuals to access military benefits that confer individual gain and self-improvement in their civilian lives. We find in the citizen-soldier concept a simultaneous valuing of the individual and the collective, of free choice and obedience, and of violence and benevolence, that takes these larger discourses found in American society and through processes of behavioral practice, spatial displacement, and narrativity combines them into a category that locates the individual citizen-soldier at the nexus of key tensions existing within American society.

The current study had several limitations. Most notably, the small sample size of Guard members from within one small geographic area precludes drawing generalizations to the experience of National Guard members as a whole. While the qualitative methodology used here has revealed provocative questions and insights into the current Guard experience, results presented here need to be verified on a larger scale using complementary qualitative and quantitative methodologies in order to determine their applicability to a wider population.

National Guard soldiers sit in the middle of tensions between civilian and military cultural premises in American society. Their ability to successfully balance these tensions in their own lives provides a microcosmic example for civil–military relations in the United States writ large. Perhaps, the same processes of practice, spatial displacement, and narrativity that individuals use to negotiate cases of dual cultural belonging can translate into a larger theory of cooperation, coexistence, and more importantly mutual understanding between US civilian society and the military.