‘Hungry, Weary and Horny’: Joking and Jesting among Israel's Combat Reserves

Ben‐Ari, Eyal; Sion, Liora

doi:10.1080/13537120500233789

Cited by 18 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…Humor har blitt presentert som et fundamentalt element ved militaert arbeid og et avgjørende medium for sosialisering inn i militaere normer (Ben-Ari & Sion 2005;Weibull og Karlsson 2013, Godfrey 2016Sløk-Andersen 2019). Militaerforskere har i høy grad beskrevet humor gjennom dens positive funksjoner og effekter.…”

Section: Eksisterende Kunnskapunclassified

Humorens tvetydige funksjon

Lilleaas

Ellingsen²,

Sløk-Andersen³

2020

TFK

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I både det danske og norske Forsvaret har vi sett hvordan en utbredt bruk av humor tilsynelatende gjør hverdagen morsommere for noen soldater, mens den for andre har en negativ effekt. Ikke minst gjelder det for de kvinnene som ofte er ofre for humoren-en gruppe som allerede er i en utsatt posisjon i den tradisjonelle mannsbastionen. I denne artikkelen legger vi vekt på å analysere formene, funksjonene og forklaringene på denne ekskluderende humoren. Det kan diskuteres i hvilken grad bruken av humor er et bevisst virkemiddel eller «kun en spøk», men resultatet er at enkelte må tåle mer enn de finner bekvemt, og at noen er offer for latterliggjøring og trakassering. Det å le av andres morsomheter, eller selv kunne produsere vittigheter som settes pris på, kan vaere tegn på at du er en del av gruppen. Hvem vil da vaere en «killjoy» ved å si fra? Vi setter humoren inn i en kontekst av kulturelle demarkasjoner av hva som er gyldig i det militaere feltet, og som et eksempel på problemene knyttet til å endre organisasjonens kultur. På denne måten vil vi diskutere en dimensjon av #metoo der seksuell trakassering kan vaere forkledd som humor. Avslutningsvis gir vi eksempler på strategier for å håndtere denne formen for eksklusjon. Gode strategier er sjelden vare, noe som understreker alvoret i humor som ekskluderende våpen. Den trakasserende og tidvis svaert grove humoren må muligens forstås som et livsfasefenomen. Vi bruker også begreper som homososialitet og hegemonisk maskulinitet for å analysere humoren og den relaterte atferden.

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Section: Eksisterende Kunnskapunclassified

Humorens tvetydige funksjon

Lilleaas

Ellingsen²,

Sløk-Andersen³

2020

TFK

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“…For religious Zionist combat soldiers, the kinds of misogynistic “rhetoric of sexual performance” (Ben-Ari and Sion 2005, 664) that is so much a part of military masculinity stands in stark contrast to their own pious sensibilities. On any given Friday night in IDF dining rooms throughout the country, enlisted combat soldiers can be heard singing morale-boosting songs around the festive Sabbath dinner table.…”

Section: Gender Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ethnographers of the Israeli military have specifically grappled with the ethical dilemmas inherent in the act of killing (Bar and Ben-Ari 2005), the larger political (Allen 2012) and gendered (Lavie 2019) frameworks of military violence, along with the many other physical forms of violence that have become so much a part of the IDF’s policing activities within the Palestinian civilian population centers of the West Bank (Ben-Ari 1989; Bornstein 2001; Gazit and Ben-Ari 2017; Grassiani 2013). In a more limited sense, anthropologists have also been interested in the everyday lives of the soldiers who take both an active and structural part in executing forms of political violence in conflict zones (Feige and Ben-Ari 1991; Ben-Ari and Sion 2005; Stern and Ben-Shalom 2019). Much less ethnographic attention, however, has been given to the religious and ritualistic modalities of military life, that is to say, to the ways in which religious fidelities and ritual observances among combat soldiers in the field might relate to broader social and political tensions within Israeli society.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soldiers and Scholars: Ritual Dilemmas among National Religious Combat Soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces

Stern

Ben-Shalom

2020

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

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This article explores how the practice of Jewish rabbinic law within the combat ranks of the Israel Defense Forces can be used as an ethnographic medium through which anthropologists may better contextualize the social and political tensions that characterize Jewish religious nationalism in Israel. We argue that national religious combat soldiers rarely turn to rabbinic legal tracts, or to the overlapping levels of military and civilian rabbinic leadership in their immediate efforts to resolve the everyday ritual dilemmas of their service. Rather, these dilemmas are primarily addressed and (always imperfectly) resolved on the small-scale intra-unit level. Through this ethnographic window into the religious and ritual aspects of military life, this article ultimately argues that the experience of political piety in Israel (and perhaps the wider Middle East) hinges not so much upon the power play between opposing religious and secular institutions but rather in the daily ambivalences and ambiguities experienced by individual adherents as they go about their daily lives.

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“…However, as Ben-Ari and Sion (2006) argue, such exclusionary practices go beyond mere interservice rivalry and jockeying for position:…”

Section: Initiation Through Humourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soldiering on: Exploring the role of humour as a disciplinary technology in the military

Godfrey

2014

Organization

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This article considers the role of humour as a disciplinary technology. Using the British military as an organizational context, and drawing on data from the published memoirs of recently serving military personnel, the article makes three arguments in this regard. First, it is argued that the disciplinary apparatus of the military, as an example of a rule-bound and hierarchical organizational structure, creates the conditions that allow for a controlled form of resistance (through humour) to be enacted by organizational subjects; but ultimately, such acts work to serve the requirements of the organization. Second, it is argued that humour contributes to the establishing of social cohesion through disciplinary practices of inclusion and exclusion and the drawing of lines of normalization, both at the local level and at a wider institutional level. Third, it is argued that humour permeates the power relations that structure organizational life: both those governed by rank and position and those that arise through the modes of self-regulation through which much organizational disciplining is enacted. This article concludes by drawing attention to the dialectic and dynamic nature of humour while also offering suggestions for the wider applicability of the disciplinary role of workplace humour.

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‘Hungry, Weary and Horny’: Joking and Jesting among Israel's Combat Reserves

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

Humorens tvetydige funksjon

Humorens tvetydige funksjon

Soldiers and Scholars: Ritual Dilemmas among National Religious Combat Soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces

Soldiering on: Exploring the role of humour as a disciplinary technology in the military

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