©2007 Melissa Tracey Brown ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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©2007 Melissa Tracey Brown ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ENLISTING MASCULINITY: GENDER AND THE RECRUITMENT OF THE ALL-VOLUNTEER FORCE by MELISSA TRACEY BROWN A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Political Science written under the direction of Leela Fernandes and approved by ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October, 2007 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Enlisting Masculinity: Gender and the Recruitment of the All-Volunteer Force By MELISSA TRACEY BROWN Dissertation Director: Leela Fernandes This dissertation explores how the US military branches have coped with the problem of recruiting a volunteer force in a period when masculinity, a key ideological underpinning of military service, was widely perceived to be in crisis. The central questions of this dissertation are: when the military appeals to potential recruits, does it present service in masculine terms, and if so, in what forms? How do recruiting materials construct gender as they create ideas about soldiering? Do the four service branches, each with its own history, institutional culture, and specific personnel needs, deploy gender in their recruiting materials in significantly different ways? In order to answer these questions, I collected recruiting advertisements published by the four armed forces in several magazines between 1970 and 2003 and analyzed them using an interpretive textual approach. The print ad sample was supplemented with television commercials, recruiting websites, and media coverage of recruiting. The dissertation finds that the military branches have presented several versions of masculinity, including both transformed models that are gaining dominance in the civilian sector and traditional warrior forms. While the Marines rely exclusively on a ii traditional model, the Army, Navy, and Air Force also draw on various strands of masculinity that are in circulation in the wider culture, including professional/managerial forms, masculinity tied to mastery of technology, and hybrid masculinity which combines toughness and aggression with compassion and egalitarianism. The military’s use of particular models of masculinity can reinforce their status and help to make them socially dominant, especially within the groups targeted. In the recruiting ads, women are offered some access to characteristics and experiences generally associated with men, but the representations make it clear that men are the primary audience and the desired target. The approach to representing women taken by each service differs, but combat and warriorhood are associated exclusively with men. The dissertation ends with a brief study of military recruiting in Great Britain, to raise the issue of whether the American approach is unique to our military institutions and gender system or whether volunteer militaries in other states deploy constructions of gender in similar ways. iii Acknowledgements Parts of the case study of Great Britain in Chapter Seven were previously published as “‘Be the Best’: Military Recruiting and the Cultural Construction of Soldiering in Great Britain,” in GSC Quarterly, Number 5 (Summer 2002). My completion of this project has depended on the support of many people. I’m grateful to the members of my dissertation committee for the help they’ve given me throughout the process. My advisor, Leela Fernandes, patiently provided guidance through several different incarnations of this dissertation. Ed Rhodes has been immensely generous with feedback, and his incisive comments, to the extent I’ve heeded them, have improved my work. Cyndi Daniels supported my interest in gender and the military from my first semester of coursework at Rutgers. The work of Cynthia Enloe, my outside reader, has served as an inspiration and a model for my own. If I hadn’t read Bananas, Beaches, and Bases as an undergraduate, I never would have gone to graduate school. The Women and Politics students and faculty, and especially Sue Carroll and Kerry Haynie, provided a supportive intellectual community. Dean Barbara Bender of the Graduate School not only gave me a good job, she has unstintingly supplied me with encouragement and good advice for four years. I owe thanks to many of my fellow graduate students, some of whom read my work in one or the other of the two ill-fated dissertation groups to which I belonged, and all of whom have provided me with friendship. They include Jen Einspahr, Molly Baab, Denise Horn, Jon DiCicco, Alexandra Filindra, Martin Edwards, Krista Jenkins, Stephanie Olson, Nichole Shippen, and Sarah Alexander. My non-academic friends, especially Alyse Grohowski, Jill Serfaty, Aimee Cote, and Nicole Sin Quee, have amused iv and distracted me whenever I’ve needed it. My family has cheered me on, even though I’ve generally refused to talk about what I’m doing and when I would be done doing it. (My father was convinced I would go directly from student health insurance to Medicare.) My biggest debt of gratitude is to Sanford Whiteman, to whom this dissertation is dedicated. Not only has he provided me with encouragement, affection, emotional support, technical assistance, and a place to live, he’s good at identifying Air Force planes in recruiting ads. v Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iv List of Tables ................................................................................................................... viii 1. Introduction and Methodology ........................................................................................1 The Study of Military Recruitment ...............................................................................5 Central Questions ........................................................................................................15 The Military Branches as Institutions and the Discipline of Political Science ...........18 Methods ......................................................................................................................22 The Recruiting Advertisement Sample .......................................................................29 The Plan of the Dissertation .......................................................................................32 2. Concepts and Context: Masculinity, Citizenship, and the Creation of the AVF ...........38 The Construction of Masculinity ................................................................................38 Military Masculinities ............................................................................................40 The Crisis in Masculinity .......................................................................................46 The Military, Citizenship, and Gender .......................................................................55 The All-Volunteer Force (AVF) .................................................................................64 3. The Army .......................................................................................................................76 Army Culture ..............................................................................................................78 The Recruiting Background ........................................................................................81 The Recruiting Advertisements ..................................................................................84 Women, the Army, and Recruiting ...........................................................................106 Conclusions: Masculinity and Army Recruiting ......................................................119 4. The Navy ......................................................................................................................124 Navy Culture .............................................................................................................125 The Recruiting Background ......................................................................................128 The Recruiting Advertisements—Part I: The First Two Decades of the AVF .........130 Women, the Navy, and Recruiting ...........................................................................139 The Recruiting Advertisements—Part II: The 1990s to the Iraq War ......................147 Conclusions: Masculinity and Navy Recruiting .......................................................165 5. The Marine Corps ........................................................................................................168 Marine Culture ..........................................................................................................169 The Recruiting Background ......................................................................................173 The Recruiting Advertisements ................................................................................178 Women, the Marine Corps, and Recruiting ..............................................................191 Conclusions ...............................................................................................................202 6. The Air Force ...............................................................................................................204