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MILITARY WORKFARE The Soldier and Social Citizenship in Canada
Studies in Comparative Political Economy and Public Policy Editors: M I C H A E L H O W L E T T , D A V I D L A Y C O C K , S T E P H E N M C B R I D E , Simon Fraser University Studies in Comparative Political Economy and Public Policy is designed to showcase innovative approaches to political economy and public policy from a comparative perspective. While originating in Canada, the series will provide attractive offerings to a wide international audience, featuring studies with local, sub-national, cross-national, and international empirical bases and theoretical frameworks. Editorial Advisory Board Jeffrey Ayres, St Michael’s College, Vermont Neil Bradford, University of Western Ontario Janine Brodie, University of Alberta William Carroll, University of Victoria William Coleman, McMaster University Rodney Haddow, University of Toronto Jane Jenson, Université de Montréal Laura Macdonald, Carleton University Riane Mahon, Carleton University Michael Mintrom, University of Auckland Grace Skogstad, University of Toronto Leah Vosko, York University Linda White, University of Toronto Kent Weaver, Brookings Institution Robert Young, University of Western Ontario For a list of books published in the series, see page 315.
DEBORAH COWEN
Military Workfare The Soldier and Social Citizenship in Canada
U N I V E R S I T Y O F TO R O N TO P R E S S Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2008 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-0-8020-9233-5
Printed on acid-free paper
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Cowen, Deborah Military workfare: the soldier and social citizenship in Canada / Deborah Cowen. (Studies in comparative political economy and public policy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8020-9233-5 1. War and society – Canada – History – 20th century. 2. Soldiers – Canada – History – 20th century. 3. Citizenship – Canada – History – 20th century. 4. Welfare state – Canada – History. 5. Sociology, Military – Canada. 6. Canada – Armed Forces – History – 20th century. I. Title. II. Series. HV105.C693 2007 361.6'50971
C2007-904781-5
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
Contents
List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction: The Soldier and the Social
3
2 The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 3 Post-War Citizenship: Mass and Militarized
25 60
4 The Urban, the Educated, and the Recruitment Crisis
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5 Reorienting Recruitment: Towards a ‘Different’ Military? 6 The Military after Discipline
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7 The Soldier and the Rise of Workfare: Generalizing an Exceptional Figure? 230 Conclusion: Neoliberal Military Citizenship? Notes
261
Bibliography Index
303
275
255
159
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Illustrations
Plates 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 3.17 3.18 3.19 3.20 3.21 3.22 3.23 3.24 3.25
’Are You a Postwar Planner?’ ‘Plan Your Own Home’ ‘Pin-Up Father’ Post-War Woman Scouting for Boys School Book Cover: Plane in Orbit School Book Cover: ‘Horizons Unlimited’ School Book Cover: Flight Base School Book Cover: ‘Your Education Comes First’ High Flight 1 High Flight 2 ‘Modern Work for Modern Women’ ‘Modern Work for the Modern Woman’ ‘Neat, Trim … and Efficient’ ‘An Exciting Career’ ‘The Smartest Women’s Service’ ‘Functional Fashion for 1943’ ‘Neat and Trim’ ‘A Fashion Parade’ ‘Start Training Now’ ‘Know Where You’re Going’ ‘Competence in the Air’ ‘Fly with the RCAF’ ‘Aim High’ ‘Join the Army Now’
viii Illustrations
3.26 3.27 4.1 4.2 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 7.1
‘Training Today’ ‘Key Man’ ‘Military-Society Relations’ John Lennon and Yoko Ono meet with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau ‘Diversity/Diversité’ ‘Blanktown’ ‘The Diverse Military of the Future?’ ‘Not in Military’ Canadian Forces Families Canadian Forces Quality of Life Homecoming The Global Map of U.S. Party Politics
Tables 2.1 Comparison of Mothers’ Allowances with Armed Forces Allowances, 1943 4.1 Student Retention to Last Year of High School for Canada and Provinces, 1965–6 and 1970–1 4.2 Percentage of CF Personnel or Enrollees at Various Education Levels Compared to Population Percentages, 1975–1986 4.3 Percentage of Urban Population by Region, 1901–1996 5.1 Ethnic Origin Proportional Differences between Census and Applicant Data 5.2 Applicants’ Ethnic Origin Nationally and by Recruiting Zones 5.3 Actual and Targeted Representation, Regular Force and Primary Reserve, 1997 6.1 National Defence Cadet Expenditures, 1997–2000 Figures 4.1 Canadian School Leavers in Thousands, Actual and Projected, 1957–1977 5.1 Number of Male and Female Officers in the CF, 1972–1992
Acknowledgments
This book is the culmination of many years’ work and the product of many people’s contributions. It began with the devastating events of 11 September 2001, which also happened to be the first day of my PhD work in geography at the University of Toronto. This timing eliminates what, to friends and family, was a bit of a mystery in my decision to pursue questions of war and citizenship for the dissertation research that forms the basis of this book. At 9 a.m. on 9/11 I joined a large group of students, staff, and faculty who stood watching the stadium-sized television monitor mounted in the lobby of the arts and science building at the University of Toronto’s downtown campus. We watched as the second plane flew into New York’s World Trade Center towers, stunned and immobilized for some time, before eventually proceeding to class. I would like to thank Emily Gilbert, who taught that class, and the small group of dedicated and thoughtful graduate students who made it such a fabulous learning experience, specifically Ann Simonds and Valentine Cadieux. With them it became possible to start to work through that opening day’s events. Emily has since become a tremendous friend, and our discussions since that day have helped shape this work in myriad ways. This was not, however, the only event that provoked this project. Downsview Park, a decommissioned Canadian Forces military base, sits en route to the post-war suburban campus of York University. I travelled there regularly in 2002 to take part in two graduate seminars in citizenship studies with Engin Isin. The eerily iconic post-war subdivisions that constitute the military family housing of the base were of immediate and lasting intrigue. Trying to understand the political geographies and genealogies of this landscape in connection with
x Acknowledgments
contemporary dynamics of citizenship and militarism would monopolize my attention for the years to come and eventually produce this text. The other legacy of this suburban ramble is an ongoing dialogue with Engin. I thank him deeply for challenging me to think differently and for opening up new worlds, even when I acted less than grateful. I spent a term teaching at the Royal Military College of Canada in 2003 – another enormously rewarding experience, which contributed to my thinking about soldier citizens in many ways. I thank Lubromyr Luciuk and Houchang Hassan-Yari for the opportunity, and Abdulkerim Ousman and Gisele LaBrie for their camaraderie during my term in Kingston. I also thank the officer cadets at RMC who taught me so much about their own work and lives. At Library and Archives Canada, Lana Merrifield and Myrna Teske were invaluable in helping me navigate the complexities of accessing decades of restricted documents, while Jean Matheson provided weighty assistance with reproductions. Janet Lacroix at the National Defence Image Library and Anne-Marie Beaton at Canadian Press Images offered essential help in tracking down additional photos and permissions. I am also tremendously thankful to the current and retired staff at the Canadian Forces and Department of National Defence who provided me with precious information and thoughtful analyses of the history and future of personnel and recruitment policy, in particular, Sandy Cotton, Frank Pinch, and Cheryl Baldwin. I thank Virgil Duff, Ani Deyirmenjian, and Anne Laughlin of the University of Toronto Press for their generous support. I feel incredibly fortunate that Wayne Herrington read the manuscript with such a careful and respectful eye, and made many helpful suggestions to improve the text. I am very grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for providing funding for this research in the form of a doctoral fellowship. A postdoctoral fellowship, also from SSHRC, gave me the luxury of more time for more work. With this funding I was able to devote time to reworking this manuscript, as well as initiate a new program of research that helped me think differently about my military archive. The combined effects of the in/security state and neoliberal marketization, central themes of this book, have rendered both the financial support and academic freedom that come with SSHRC funds all too rare resources for emerging scholars today. I have thus aimed to put these resources to work as I take up, in my own way, these vital but vicious political trajectories.
Acknowledgments xi
At the University of Toronto, Donna Jeynes and Marianne Ishibashi provided fantastic administrative support. I owe a special debt to Sue Ruddick, without whom I would never have embarked on graduate work. Her patience, encouragement, and broad intellectual support made it possible for me to pursue these unconventional questions and spaces, and eventually return to common ground. Kanishka Goonewardena has been a sometimes-friend and sometimes-teacher, but always appreciated for his support and challenge in both capacities. The members of my dissertation committee were incredibly generous with their time and energy. Meric Gertler, Emily Gilbert, Robert Lewis, and Sue Ruddick read my work, and then read more, and more, and more. Sue Bunce, Valentine Cadieux, Paul Jackson, Nik Luka, Sharlene Mollett, Roger Picton, Bobby Ramsay, Jen Ridgley, Yogendra Shakya, Amy Siciliano, Kate Swanson, Laura Taylor, Luisa Veronis, Tara Vinodrai, Alan Walks, Jill Wigle, and Anne Wu have been fabulous littermates to learn from and with, and I can’t thank this crew enough. Later in the game, both Deborah Leslie and Ernie Lightman contributed stimulating questions and supportive comments. Jamie Peck engaged my dissertation work fully and raised insightful points for further research and deliberation. Gerald Kernerman is always raising questions that are hard to answer but necessary to ask. I also thank Steve Graham for a very helpful dialogue on geography and warfare and for his broad support for this route through those themes. Still, I received more support. Leah Vosko welcomed me to work with her and her colleagues at York University as a postdoctoral fellow. Before knowing Leah I already admired her dedication to feminist praxis and scholarship, and after working with her on various projects in 2005–6 I became only more impressed. She is extraordinarily generous to those around her, and I am deeply grateful to her for this. I also thank Krista Scott Dixon, John Grundy, Susan Braedley, and Marie Josée Dupuis. These unusually wise, playful, and provocative people were wonderful and stimulating colleagues to share some time and space in a tucked-away office on the Keele Street campus. I am grateful to the members of the SOCIUS network, specifically the group who came together for the ‘Recasting the Social in Citizenship’ workshop in 2006: Sirma Bilge, Janine Brodie, Xiaobei Chen, Engin Isin, Danielle Juteau, Paul Kershaw, and Daiva Stasiulis. This incredible collection of citizenship studies scholars has initiated vital discussions, which push me to think more carefully and expansively at once.
xii Acknowledgments
I benefited from an extraordinary experience at the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University. Tim Mitchell welcomed me into the 2006–7 seminar ‘Rethinking the Social,’ and here I learned that groups really can be good. Rigorous engagement, productive critique, and good humour entwined in our weekly meetings, and I would regularly learn more in a single morning with this crew than in entire months prior. Tim’s leadership was no doubt central to this success, but so too were the contributions of the ICAS fellows and visiting scholars: Jane Anderson, Tom Bender, Ulla Berg, Julia Elyachar, Allen Hunter, Maimuna Huq, Hui Jiang, Eric Klinenberg, Andy Lakoff, Alondra Nelson, Chris Otter, Natasha Dow Schull, Sherene Seikaly, Ella Shohat, Peggy Somers, Miriam Ticktin, Weihua Wu, and Diana Yoon. Despite all this academic grace, I remain convinced that it is relatively rare that real learning happens in the classroom! I have been extremely lucky to learn from bold and brilliant people in other spheres of life. I thank Sonja Mills who ‘kept the home fires burning’ while I trudged back and forth to Kingston all winter in 2003. She has been a source of untold humour and grounding wit, and remains one of my greatest heroes and best friends. I also thank all the spectacular people I met in and around Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto over the years, particularly at the old space on George Street. They taught me how to laugh and create when I might otherwise crumble and cry, and show such courage in their claims and questions, and challenge me to do the same. I particularly thank Alex Bulmer, Ali Eisner, Sky Gilbert, Ann Holloway, Kirsten Johnson, Moynan King, Peter Lynch, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Shoshanna Sperling, R.M. Vaughan, Clinton Walker, and Patricia Wilson. Down the street from Buddies in downtown Toronto is an all-night restaurant where I worked for five years. I learned more from my co-workers while mopping floors or making tuna melts than I ever could have anticipated. Robert MacDonald and Aldington Coombs were especially fierce and fabulous, voguing and prancing through the kitchen as they unleashed their poetry of everyday life and struggle. These people have helped constitute my networks of chosen family over the years, but I have also been fortunate to be surrounded by outrageously supportive involuntary kin too. Leslie Oppenheimer Cowen always teaches me courage and strength in her daily determination, and her unwavering support has made all the difference. I feel closer to
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Leah Cowen with every year that passes, and see more clearly every day that she has always been there for me in extraordinary and essential ways. Jeremy Cowen teaches me so much about the ways worlds work, and always without a fuss. Troy Ketela and Jacques Paris have been an incredible source of fun, love, and sustenance. Robert Cowen and Judy Low stand close by me from afar and always open the door at an instant’s notice to their incredible alternative world. I ended up finishing this book in New York City – not for the twin towers, but for a relationship that formed unexpectedly, as powerful things often do. Through all this, Neil Smith has been a beautiful comrade with whom to share a life of late-night writing, constant reading, and perpetual and lively debate. He has been extraordinarily generous in his engagement with this work, admirable for his deep commitment to the politics of knowledge production, and courageous in risking so much just to spend some time. I look forward to laughing and loving my way through untold projects with him in the future.
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MILITARY WORKFARE The Soldier and Social Citizenship in Canada
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1 Introduction: The Soldier and the Social
In April 2006, surrounded by mounting controversy and the toll of dead and injured Canadian bodies for the ‘war on terror,’ the recently elected Harper government unveiled a new benefit plan for veterans. Touted as the ‘most comprehensive since the end of the Second World War,’ the ‘Veterans Charter’ was initially drafted by the former Liberal government but expanded by Harper and company to include a ‘Veterans’ Bill of Rights’ (Globe 2006). Speaking directly before a group of veterans assembled for the announcement on Parliament Hill, Stephen Harper proclaimed: ‘Past and present, you embody the highest attributes of citizenship and loyalty to our country … Our troops’ commitment and service to Canada entitle them to the very best treatment possible’ (CTV 2006a; emphasis added). The Veterans Charter is the most recent instalment in a string of new public investment in the social welfare of soldiers that began in the 1990s. New funds have been devoted to military housing, military pensions have been expanded and made more ‘flexible,’ an entire new directorate has been created to address military ‘Quality of Life,’ childcare programs for military families have been initiated, and recreation facilities, health policies, and education benefits for military personnel have been renewed. More than six decades earlier, in 1942, at the height of the productivity and destruction of the Second World War, Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King deliberated a profound reorientation in the relationship between state and citizen. Determined to maintain troop morale with the promise of rewards for service, King offered to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ‘the thought of insurance from the cradle to the grave. That seems to be a line that will appeal. You and I should take that up strongly. It will help each of us politically as well as being on the right lines in the way of reform’ (Guest 1987:208).
4 Military Workfare
When the Marsh Report, the blueprint for Canada’s post-war welfare state, was released, in 1943, author Leonard Marsh explained that ‘social security has become accepted as one of the things for which people of the world are fighting. It is one of the concrete expressions of “a better world.”’ In his report, Marsh asserted that a precedent for national welfare provision for the post-war era could be found in the military, where ‘soldiers, sailors and airmen and their dependents really have a microcosm of social security already’ (Marsh 1943:2). Although more than sixty years apart, these moments are similar and different. They are alike insofar as social welfare has been actively reorganized in direct relation to war; more specifically, each moment is characterized by new investment in the social welfare of soldiers. This continuity suggests that there are lasting connections between national warfare and welfare. In times of war, the state prioritizes the provision of services to those who serve the nation, and war work operates as an important arbiter of entitlement for citizenship. Both then and now, the social citizenship of soldiers emerges as a political problem and a solution too. The social citizenship of soldiers becomes a problem when the state’s instrumental need for skilled and unskilled bodies to fight wars collides with the needs, desires, and demands of those bodies. Workercitizens at war require a host of social and medical services and may make demands for further social rights in exchange for their military service. Military welfare has been a solution to the problem of troop morale, wavering wartime patriotism of the population, and hesitance among young citizens for voluntary military enlistment. Welfare is a crucial technology and increasingly costly strategy for managing the politics and economy of military recruitment. But while there are continuities between the logic of provision from the period of the Second World War through to the early years of the twenty-first century, there are also crucial differences. Whereas the expansion of benefits for the labouring population during the Second World War was the basis for the assemblage of post-war civilian welfare, recent investment in the social welfare of military personnel is occurring alongside the dismantling of civilian social welfare and security. We might make similar observations regarding welfare and warfare if we broadened beyond the boundaries of the Canadian state to consider countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom. For all the significant differences in social welfare provision in these places, there are also resounding commonalities. In these countries too, benefits were expanded for veterans during the Second World War and
Introduction: The Soldier and the Social 5
were either immediately or eventually extended to civilians (Titmuss 1958). Britain’s wartime blueprint of post-war welfare, the ‘Beveridge Plan,’ also officially known as ‘The Report to the Parliament on Social Insurance and Allied Services,’ radicalized popular visions for the future across advanced capitalist nations and directly influenced reconstruction in countries such as France (Kershen 1995), Australia (Jenkins 1945; Oppenheimer 2005), and Canada (Guest 1997). The wartime context was crucial, not coincidental; as the Guardian newspaper asserted in 1942, one of the most ‘attractive features of the plan’ is the extension of social security ‘to the whole population, which carries forward our war ideas of equality and community.’ Implemented two years later, the American GI Bill was the most sweeping social welfare legislation ever institutionalized in the United States. Benefits were reserved for veterans and indirectly distributed to their ‘dependents.’ However, social movements managed to largely ‘de-militarize’ U.S. welfare throughout the 1960s.1 Struggles against militarism, and for the expanded rights of groups previously excluded from social welfare entitlements, helped galvanize shifts, which made the soldier less central to American social welfare. According to Moskos (2005), this ‘de-militarization’ of welfare in effect gave the United States a ‘GI bill without the GI.’ In these countries, as in Canada, the welfarist emphasis on social rights and entitlements did not entirely displace notions of service and obligation. At the foundation of social rights was a national duty. Beveridge (1942:9) would himself assert this crucial paradox, which I will return to shortly, when he explained that ‘social security must be achieved by co-operation between the State and the individual. The State should offer security for service and contribution.’ Parallels are also plentiful in the contemporary period. Targeted welfare initiatives for military personnel have been expanded in tandem with the dismantling of the civilian social rights that took shape earlier. The United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom have been leaders recently in crafting new welfare benefits for military personnel. The United States began to experiment as it moved to an allvolunteer armed force in 1973 and the military had to search for new ways to attract and retain recruits. This was happening amid major transformations in the practice of citizenship and the structure of the labour force, transformations that in the 1970s affected not just the United States but also the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Ironically, these transformations were provoked by the
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social and economic compacts of post–Second World War reconstruction and eventually created recruitment crises for the military. Investment in ‘military welfare’ was the military’s response to the crisis. The expansion of benefits was a means of making the military more competitive in the labour market, or in the words of the Canadian Armed Forces, a strategy to become ‘an employer of choice.’ Accommodating changing needs of social reproduction – for instance, childcare for ‘dual deployed’ households – was another pressing concern. The bulk of research on the ‘military family’ was initiated in these countries in the 1980s, and significant policy experimentation followed (Harrison and Laliberté 1994). Organizations devoted to the military family were formed at this time; for example, Defence Families of Australia was founded in 1986, Britain’s Army Families Federation was created in 1982, and Canada’s Military Family Support Program was initiated in 1991. Some surprising policy developments also took place. In 1989 the U.S. Congress passed the Military Child Care Act, which led to the creation of a system that serves over 200,000 children daily at more than 300 locations around the world (Duff Campbell 2000). More recently, in March 2006, Australia’s Defence Child Care Program received expanded funding for 38 military childcare centres (Bilson 2006). National militaries have created spousal employment training and placement programs and even ‘spousal combat readiness’ programs in recent years. Military base communities are now served by a range of new social services, such as the recent Royal Air Force practice of employing ‘Community Development Workers’ on bases in the United Kingdom.2 With U.S. military expenditure equal to the total of the entire rest of the world, and an economy and research infrastructure long serving its needs (Melman 1974), it is not surprising that the United States offers some particularly dramatic examples. Today, record numbers of civilians are living without health insurance in the United States, while the military is expanding health coverage for personnel and their families.3 In a recent article in the New York Times, Tim Weiner (2005) reports that the combined cost of health care for the three services is ‘now bigger than the Army’s budget for buying new weapons.’ Investment in education has also been militarized, particularly through President George W. Bush’s ‘No Child Left Behind’ education initiative. In order for schools to access funds under this program, they must release student information to military recruiters. Moreover, schools on military bases have been exempted from the 2002 Education Act, which makes federal funding
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contingent on strict performance indicators. As one U.S. officer reports, these kinds of benefits are ‘a national obligation. If the military is going to entice people to serve for decades and go to war, that carries with it certain obligations that must be fulfilled’ (Weiner 2005). These trends are clearly significant, and supranational. A few notable scholars have remarked on the peculiar nature of our present predicament in the context of this welfare and warfare past. Frances Piven (2004:3), for example, notes, ‘Historically, governments waging war sooner or later tried to compensate their people for the blood and wealth they sacrificed,’ for example, by ‘initiating or expanding social welfare programs.’ However, ‘this period,’ she asserts, ‘is markedly different.’ Piven proceeds to outline the massive cuts to social security, labour rights, and progressive taxation that are under way in the United States and elsewhere since the start of the current wars. Awareness of this situation may therefore be growing, but explanations for this curious contemporary dynamic are nowhere to be found. What might this intriguing dynamic between warfare and welfare tell us about contemporary citizenship? How might an investigation of the soldier help us rethink social citizenship and social obligation in neoliberal times? What are the implications of taking both these continuities and transformations in the relationship between soldiers and the social seriously? What can we learn from making the geographies of citizenship, welfare, and warfare explicit rather than assumed? These questions and these two moments – the Second World War and the ‘war on terror’ – largely frame this book. I ask how the military histories and geographies of citizenship yield new ways of understanding our present and past. This entangled story of welfare and warfare, of concern for the health and well-being of populations in the context of organizing large-scale destruction and death, offers some eerie but also productive insights. It demands that we take the spatiality of politics and identity seriously in both its fixity and its flux. In particular, the question of the nationalization of citizenship and the social through war and welfare, as well as the recent challenge to that political geography, is central. This book examines five decades of the military management of recruitment and personnel policy in the context of political struggles, economic change, cultural shifts, and geographic transformation in labour and citizenship. I argue that the soldier is a central piece in the puzzle of social citizenship. I posit war work as the precedent, shadow, and foundational exception for civilian welfare and paradoxically for civilian workfare too.
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These arguments clearly rely on some unusual interpretations of both war and welfare. Put differently, when we ask the kinds of questions about the soldier and the social that I pose here, traditional methods of social scientific inquiry throw hurdles in our path. These ‘hurdles’ are constituted by the established categories and disciplinary boundaries of academic inquiry, as well as by a poverty of geographic thought in the relevant fields of study. The first hurdle is the widespread tendency to naturalize the nation state, which then closes off crucial questions regarding the labour of its assemblage and reproduction. The second hurdle is the typical status of war as an exceptional state in social scientific inquiry and its corresponding exclusion from our theorizing. The third hurdle that must be cleared with gumption if not grace in order for this study to proceed is the common neglect of ‘domestic’ geographies of citizenship in relation to politics at supranational spatial scales. The political imaginary of international relations that dominates most work on war occludes the co-constitutive nature of struggles at different scales. A final hurdle is the separation of the concepts of citizenship and labour and their respective fields of inquiry in the academy, and the impossibility of approaching the soldier through this fractured lens. I will address these challenges in the sections that follow, with the aim of teasing out alternative approaches, before returning to the central arguments and organization of this book. Welfare States and Nation States: Taking Space and Scale Seriously To capture the significance of nationalism within our lives, we need to recognize that any and all ideas premised on the taken-for-granted assumption of the naturalness (if not always the beneficence) of the national state system with its separation of discrete national groupings are a part of the repertoire of nationalist discursive practice. (Sharma 2006:150)
The welfare state of the twentieth century was a firmly national project, and the bulk of welfare state scholarship has largely assumed rather than investigated that same geography. Studies of the French, German, or Australian welfare state are typically organized around ‘internal’ political questions of regimes, the dynamics of class structure and relations, and gendered social ‘contracts’ of (re)production. This work is complemented by comparative analysis between nation states, or by theories that see commonality among ‘families of nations’ (Castles and Mitchell 1993), or different ‘worlds’ of welfare capitalism
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(Esping-Andersen 1990). Pairing a national analysis with an international one can certainly add nuance to our scholarship. It is unquestionably an important act to consider policy and politics ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the nation as entwined. However, while these coupled analyses offer a more thorough accounting of processes and practices, they typically do not put the question of the territorialization of institutions and identity on their research agenda. With very few exceptions, scholars refrain from asking how welfare was part of the building of nationalism and nations.4 To neglect nation is rarely the deliberate choice of scholars but a pernicious effect of nationalization, as Sharma suggests. Moreover, the problem of national spatiality needs to be understood in the broader context of the absence of geographical questions and imaginaries in most of twentieth-century thought. As Soja (1989:4) argued almost two decades ago to a generally resistant academy, we inherit and reproduce ways of understanding the world that emphasize the historical and submerge the geographical imagination. With the rise of industrial capitalism ‘space was treated as the dead, the fixed, the undialectical, the immobile,’ Foucault (1980:70) asserts. ‘Time on the contrary was richness, fecundity, life, dialectic.’ But in contrast to a Cartesian-Kantian conceptualization of space as a priori that sanctions its peripheralization, a rich body of scholarship has emerged that understands space as socially and politically produced.5 Across diverse theorizations, a common shift posits space as something dynamic and created rather than an isometric plane upon which social relations proceed. A relational conception understands space as the medium and result of social relations, social struggle, and natural processes, which yield particular physical configurations and imaginaries. Building on these debates, the question of geographical scale has emerged to address not only the political nature of space but also the active organization of the scalar ‘metrics’ of our human geographies (Smith 1997). This work insists that the organization of particular human activities and relations at a given scale emerges as a result of social and political struggle, and that scale then serves to organize and contain socio-spatial relations and networks (Smith 1984, 1996; Herod 1991; Swyngedouw 1997; Crump and Merrett 1998; Herod and Wright 2002). One important implication of this work is that the constitution of geographical scale becomes a crucial object of inquiry. In other words, because scale is actively produced we need to explain its making and not just the conflicts or activities fixed at or ‘in’ a particular scale. While these insights have circulated and been developed widely
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across the social sciences and humanities well beyond the bounds of human geography, particularly in political economy, environmental studies, and citizenship studies (Jessop 1994; Mahon 2005; Grundy and Smith 2005), their take-up has been uneven at best. A number of scholars have mobilized these ideas for thinking through contemporary questions of the globalization and urbanization of politics and citizenship and so their ‘rescaling’ at supra and sub-national scales (Peck 1998; Brenner 1999; Marston 2000; Ehrkamp and Leitner 2003; Swyngedouw 2004; Cowen 2005b), as well as the reconfiguration of ‘the social’ at the mobile scale of ‘community’ (Rose 1996; Stenson and Watt 1999). Emerging out of Marxist, feminist, regulation, and governmentality scholarship, this work suggests that the rescaling of government is central to the transformation of its forms. Space and scale do not follow political forms but are vital to their constitution (Peck 1998). The reterritorialization of government is simultaneously a reconfiguration of state forms, political identity, practices of citizenship, and the government of the social. However, despite the dynamism of these debates, they have had only marginal impact on mainstream and specifically historical scholarship of the welfare state. Yet scale analysis could help rethink the crucial geographical differentiation of the world, past and present. How did the constitution of specifically national space and national scale also give rise to particular forms of state and citizenship? In an influential piece, Smith (1993:100), for example, has argued that the nation state can be understood as a historical compromise among the emerging capitalist classes for a territorial resolution between the conflicting imperatives of cooperation and competition. The nationalization of economy and institutions necessitated a nationalization of legitimate and organized violence to support the authority and ‘sovereignty’ of the state. But while scholars working on the problem of scale acknowledge that the construction of the nation-state system entailed the monopoly of legitimate violence and thus of military forces by nation states, the scaling of war has yet to receive careful or sustained consideration in this literature. The question of war sometimes enters into this work but in only the most subtle and implicit ways, as the core means of periodization, or the assumed geopolitical background to other political or economic questions. And yet, the nationalization of political institutions and imaginaries, the fact that we assume a national context for citizenship, belonging, and identity, and a national context for welfare states, is directly tied to the question of war. In order to make the work of war in welfare visible, we need to first tease out the role of nationalized war in constituting political space.
Introduction: The Soldier and the Social 11
Spaces of National War Are military and warlike institutions, and more generally the processes that are implemented to wage war, the nucleus of political institutions in either an immediate or remote sense, in either a direct or an indirect sense? (Foucault 1997:267)
For two hundred years, war has been broadly understood as organized violence that occurs between sovereign nation states. War occurs between, not within, nation states. Until recent transformations such as the U.S.-led ‘war on terror,’ the sole exception to the national practice of war was civil war waged in the name of new or nascent national formations. Today war is fought against transnational and sub-national terrorist networks by national and supranational coalitions of terrorist states, but historically, war meant conflict between national groups (which were understood as ‘natural’ groups). Scholars have contributed in important ways to this national conception of war. Starting with the work of Karl von Clausewitz, scholars have constituted war as a space of exception that exceeds the political and which is exterior to the national polity. War happens outside of normal time and space. It shatters the typical and the everyday. War is exceptional. The current fashion of the ‘state of exception’ as a frame for thinking about politics can be attributed largely to the work of Giorgio Agamben, who theorizes states of exception as legal means for suspending the law. It is the state that breaks the rule, but which is simultaneously recognized by the system of rules, and which is foundational to the operation of that system. Exceptional states ‘find themselves in the paradoxical position of being juridical measures that cannot be understood in legal terms, and the state of exception appears as the legal form of what cannot have legal form.’ At the same time exceptional states ‘are the preliminary condition for any definition of the relation that binds and, at the same time, abandons the living being to law’ (Agamben 2005:1). This emphasis on legality is instructive but can obscure the fact that it is not just any kind of rupture to the norm that is simultaneously sanctioned by it, that constitutes a state of exception. In the context of the nation state that monopolizes legitimate violence and exteriorizes war for the sake of domestic ‘peace,’ war constitutes the primary state of exception. This is a point that Agamben admits (2005:21) and that Carl Schmitt (1996) argued before him, and suggests that we would thus do well to consider the work of scholars who have addressed not simply the role of the state of exception in constituting our law, but more precisely the role of war in constituting our politics and our peace.
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The sense that war is ‘exterior’ to national politics emerges out of a long tradition of work in ‘military science’ and ‘civil-military relations.’ This work is premised upon a fundamental gap between war and politics as distinct forms and realms of human activity, and it transformed the practice of warfare and military organization. Such work is also predicated on a geographic divide between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’; domestic relations and international conflict materialize the epistemological gap between politics and war. Clausewitz is best known as the author of the widely cited maxim ‘War is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with an admixture of other means.’ It may seem that the maxim puts war and politics on a continuum as different degrees of a related state, but his maxim actually achieves the opposite. War is defined directly through its contrast to politics, as what occurs when politics-as-usual ceases. Following Foucault, Hardt and Negri suggest that Clausewitz’s attempt to distinguish war and politics must be understood in relation to the articulation of modern European theories of state sovereignty, which had the goal of ending civil wars and investing nation states with a monopoly on legitimate war (see also Foucault 1997:48). War was effectively ‘expelled from the internal national social field and reserved only for the external conflicts between states’ (Hardt and Negri 2004:6). They argue that by making war something that is always already separate from politics, in a context where war was constituted as an international and not domestic relation, Clausewitz exteriorizes war to the sovereign nation state. The nationalization of political economies and geographic imaginaries had the paradoxical effect of purging politics of alternative geographical imaginaries and naturalizing (warring) nations. In this context it is not surprising that one of the only explicitly geographical political discourses since the emergence of industrial capitalism was geopolitics, which largely operated as handmaiden to the warring national state (Godlewska and Smith 1994; Ó Tuathail 1996). Given that the nationalizations of war and politics were such deeply entwined events, rethinking the role of war in welfare also demands that we reconsider taken-for-granted political geographies. This becomes crucial given that the exteriorization of war from the nation state works to deny the struggles that traverse the national polity. Scrutinizing struggles within national space that may support or subvert the existing social order thus becomes an urgent politicalgeographic project.
Introduction: The Soldier and the Social 13
Citizenship within and beyond the National Imaginary Is not the relationship to an external Other as the Enemy a way of disavowing the internal struggle that traverses the social body? (Zizek 1999:29)
Social and class struggles that are simultaneously racialized and gendered have alternately been ignored or naturalized through national narratives of wars against foreign enemies, which assert the supposed homogeneity of the nation. Familial narratives of nation – the national as ‘domestic,’ for example – support these national imaginaries of war, which have resulted in highly racist forms of ethno-nationalism and national policy that are organized around notions of the ‘purity’ of the people (Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989). The gendered nature of this familial imaginary of the warring nation has furthermore spurred pronatalist policies that seek to encourage the biological reproduction of some women, who become the ‘mothers of the nation,’ and discourage or forcibly disable the reproduction of others (Christie 2000). As YuvalDavis writes, this can become particularly acute in the context of war when ‘women’s role then becomes to produce babies who would become soldiers in future wars’ (in Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989:100). The national imaginary of war has also been a powerful wedge in class politics; it commands the allegiance of ‘all the nation’s people,’ in denial of social and economic conflict within the nation. Buck-Morss (2000:26) argues that ‘within the nation-state model, class differences are not denied, but acknowledged as proof that national identity transcends class belonging. Thus, the fact that “rich and poor alike” feel themselves equally as “French” or “American” appears to justify nations as the natural form of collective political life … In the model where legitimate sovereignty is the exclusive preserve of nation-states, nation and state appear as one within the imaginary terrain.’ Indeed, harnessing the loyalties of a polity divided by class and region for national war has historically been a central motivation for the initiation of national welfare and social security programs. In contrast to the long-standing epistemological binary of war and peace, critical scholars now demand that we think war through peace. This means that we may unearth the very material struggles that disappear in official narratives of the nation. As Kinsman (2004:115) argues, ‘We need constantly to ask which nation and whose security is being defended through these national security practices.’ Unitary
14 Military Workfare
constructions of the nation should not be taken for granted since they are ‘based on the suppression of all the national, linguistic, class, sexual, cultural, and other social differences that constitute the Canadian social formation.’ It is by troubling national conceptions of politics that hegemonic narratives can be exposed and interrupted. In other words, we must ask about the socio-spatial relations that this national geography relies upon and (re)produces. How do struggles within states shape struggles between states? How has war transformed the political geographies of citizenship within national space, and how do those struggles help to define war abroad? One crucial point of departure is the city. In an inconspicuous footnote towards the end of his Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci asserts that a political-geographical cleavage had emerged between urbanism and cosmopolitanism on the one hand, and ruralism and nationalism on the other. Gramsci (1971:287) suggests that ‘these conflicting attitudes can in a sense be seen as two sides of the coin of fascist imperialism.’ Clearly he was writing in a very different time and place, but his observation speaks to a formidable challenge of politics and geography in our own time. Although ‘fascist’ may not be so helpful in diagnosing our present, the rest of the equation seems strangely fitting. Indeed, conflicts between urban and rural political priorities have become a mainstay of Canadian politics. According to a recent feature article in the Economist (2003), they have even displaced regional and linguistic divides to become the most frequent and powerful conflicts at the national scale. The most ‘visible cleavage in Canada’ today, the article asserts, is ‘between five large urban areas (dynamic, successful, with many immigrants but with strained public services) and the rest (mainly rural, declining economies with high unemployment, kept alive by federal aid).’ Regional, linguistic, and other territorialized conflicts remain central to Canadian politics and are a feature of the arguments in this book, but there are certainly trends that support the Economist’s claim, variants of which have been asserted in urban studies literatures for years. The very fact that more than 70 per cent of recent immigrants to Canada settle in the three largest cities indicates diverging urban and rural futures. So too does the fact that despite the 2006 victory of the Conservative Party in the federal election, it does not hold a single seat in any of these cities. While it is certainly not the stuff of patriotic poems or national anthems, this urban/rural divide is tethered to the military. Far from
Introduction: The Soldier and the Social 15
a banal detail of ‘location,’ urban and rural geographies of militarism and military service in Western nations are a key to the historical geographies of citizenship that constitute our violent present. Not only are the militaries of Western capitalist nations made up overwhelmingly of rural soldiers, but rural areas have also become the heartland of militarism and ‘authentic’ patriotism in Canada and elsewhere. The Canadian Chief of Defence, General Rick Hillier, was recently described in a feature article in the national Globe and Mail newspaper as having roots that ‘couldn’t be much more Canadian,’ insofar as he grew up in a small, remote town but adjacent to the Trans-Canada Highway (Leblanc and Richer 2005). The article mobilizes the geographic insights of Hillier’s mother, who suggests that this ‘upbringing made young Rick a natural for the army. “People from outport Newfoundland lived their lives in the woods and on the sea in rugged activities and fit into the armed forces quite easily.’’’ Heavy rural military recruitment and an ideology of rural authenticity in nationalist discourse are elements of deeply racialized geographies; both are constitutive features of Canada’s persistent white nationalism (Cowen 2007b). This rural geography of recruits, moreover, is intimately connected to five decades of transformations of work and welfare. During and after the Second World War, Canada’s cultural and political economies were radically reformed. Industrialization spurred by wartime production, the post-war extension of higher education, and the professionalization of work all contributed intensely to the urbanization of Canada. However, despite becoming the prototype of national service and the model for much national welfare, the military was left behind in the declining areas of rural and small-town Canada while the country’s economic engine and cultural experimentation urbanized. Analysis of the soldier ‘at home’ thus reveals shifting and entwined economic geographies of work, political geographies of welfare, and cultural geographies of identity and belonging. But while the figure of the soldier is vital for understanding politics within and beyond the nation, the peripheral centrality that makes the soldier so helpful for analysis also poses distinct problems. The soldier’s life and work disrupts categories of worker/citizen and normal/exceptional. Thus in order to fully mobilize the insights that come from studying soldiers, we must turn our attention to the last hurdle identified above: the soldier as an exceptional worker and citizen.
16 Military Workfare
The Soldier as (Exceptional) Worker and Citizen Military service and conscription played a key role in the early construction of national citizenship (Cohen 1985; Mann 1988). Since the French Revolution, the very figure of the national citizen has been tied to the raising of a mass army. ‘Fraternity’ was the bond of citizens in struggle, defending the new nation. The modern military was furthermore the progenitor of modern forms of workplace discipline, and has served as a long-time employer of the industrial reserve army, who ironically labour as a literal army. Military work was central in shaping the principles of Taylorism that revolutionized industrial production, workplace organization, and worker discipline (DeLanda 2005). It is therefore surprising that the soldier is largely absent from critical scholarly investigation of labour and citizenship. Silence on the soldier, just like the neglect of nation, is neither entirely accidental nor completely intentional. It is largely a feature and effect of the same ideologies that constitute war as an exceptional state. Indeed, Samuel P. Huntington, the leading Anglo scholar of ‘civilmilitary relations’ in the post–Second World War period, endorses and exercises Clausewitz’s separation of war and politics, extending this analysis to soldiers. ‘This concept of war as an autonomous and yet instrumental science,’ he argues, ‘implies a similar theory with respect to the role of the specialist in war’ (Huntington 1957:57). For Huntington, the development of a professional military allowed for the separation of soldiers from citizenship. The professionalization of armed forces and of the officer corps in particular, and the development of a military ‘science’ in the eighteenth century, created an irreconcilable gap between citizens and soldiers. With these changes, Huntington argues, war became an extension of politics – apolitical in and of itself and governed by a scientific and technological rationality. Likewise, the soldier became a professional practitioner executing a military science. According to Huntington, soldiers cannot be understood or assessed as political actors; a military body can ‘only be evaluated in terms of independent military standards.’ However, given that war is conceptualized as that which occurs outside of national space, and outside of normal time, the professional soldier can be a troubling figure. The professional soldier is the citizen whose existence is dedicated to labouring in the space of the state of exception. The soldier becomes a figure of exception in the way that war becomes a state of exception.
Introduction: The Soldier and the Social 17
In many ways the soldier seems almost the antithesis of the modern citizen in that the rights that are associated with political belonging in Western liberal democracies are held in suspension. The soldier must suspend political voice (at least in his or her capacity as a soldier), and he or she must suspend expectations of security, safety, and freedom of movement. This is indicative of the extent to which the regulations that govern the life of the soldier are incompatible with what we think of as citizenship. The doctrine of ‘unlimited liability,’ unique to military work, requires that soldiers be willing to sacrifice their own lives for the nation and stands in ‘dead’ opposition to any concept of individual rights. The soldier is furthermore constituted as residing outside the space of democracy. The soldier follows strict orders from above, or is no longer retained in his or her capacity as soldier. Hardt and Negri concur with countless legal scholars when they write that ‘democracy does not belong to war’ (2004:17), and indeed democracy does not belong to the military in times of peace either. For those who see the responsibility of the citizen as deliberative, participatory, and active in the assessment of the conduct of that polity and in the outspoken expression of those assessments, the blind patriotism demanded of service personnel is simply incomprehensible as a valuable form of citizenship. This is likely a factor in the neglect of the soldier in the dynamic field of citizenship studies. The soldier is generally absent because the civilian is assumed to be the norm. The soldier hardly figures in labour studies or political economy either. Parallel to the case with citizenship studies, the neglect of the soldier can be attributed to the ambiguous status of the soldier as a worker. This is a result of decisions that are both normative and analytic. Political economists tend to bracket the soldier from analysis of labour, perhaps because of the focus on the production of surplus value. There is a strong tradition of political economy concerned with public sector labour that might put this claim into doubt. Classic contributions by Seymour Melman (1974) and James O’Connor (1973) offer sophisticated analyses of the military dimensions of post–Second World War U.S. capitalism, which O’Connor termed ‘military Keynesianism.’ The literature takes aim at the peculiar strategy of accumulation of the U.S. military-industrial complex that is predicated on the ‘wasting’ of surplus value through war making as a means of creating value. And yet, despite moments of important resonance between this entwined analysis of welfare and warfare and the one I develop in this book, this literature does not directly address the figure of the soldier.
18 Military Workfare
In fact, beyond some important discussion of the role of military wages in the growth of the U.S. ‘New South’ – for example, in the work of economic geographer Ann Markusen (1991, 1996) – there is a dearth of scholarship that investigates the soldier as a worker. Because the work of the soldier is the labour of wasting surplus, it may be that soldiering cannot be easily accounted as capitalist work. Alternatively, the dearth of scholarship that conceptualizes the soldier as a worker could also be a result of the personal inclinations of researchers. The soldier is a figure that few would want to invest with the transformatory or revolutionary potential that motivates so much labour studies. And yet, the neglect of the soldier in labour studies and political economy at the very least skews an understanding of civilian labour given that the military is one of the largest single employers of working-class males in many advanced capitalist states, and historically an important means of upward mobility. It is not simply that the soldier ‘deserves’ ‘recognition’ by one or both of these fields, but rather that the soldier, who fits neither category easily, offers crucial insights on both. In particular, the life and work of the soldier blurs categories of obligation versus entitlement, and of duty versus right. These concepts have been used so effectively to define the major shifts in citizenship associated with the assemblage and dissolution of the welfare state. ‘Universal’ principles that confer inalienable rights to social goods on a (fully deserving) population are understood to define post–Second World War welfarism. On the other hand, shifts in the practice of citizenship under way since the 1970s reinstate obligation and capacity, which means in practice that some people become deserving of rights while other people are not. Writing in 1950, T.H. Marshall announced the dawn of a new era of social citizenship with his influential work Citizenship and Social Class. He explained that the nineteenth-century model of citizenship that preceded mid-twentieth-century social welfarism ‘did not confer a right, but it recognized a capacity’ (Marshall 1950:98). Fifty years later, a leading scholar of contemporary politics has outlined how, with the eclipse of Keynesian welfarism, normative citizenship is increasingly defined as active and entrepreneurial, transformed from a possession or right of persons-in-general to ‘a capacity to be performed through acts of choice’ (Rose 2000:99). This historical trajectory of citizenship in Western capitalist nations, from the recognition of ‘capacity’ to ‘rights,’ and then ‘capacity’ again, is central to this investigation of the soldier citizen. For the soldier, rights have long been contingent upon capacity; the right to welfare rested on service to the nation.
Introduction: The Soldier and the Social 19
But the soldier is not simply an anomaly. Rather, the exceptional status of the soldier is foundational to the practice of civilian citizenship. Military service plays a central role in broader questions of obligation and entitlement in classic liberal theory and liberal citizenship (Carter 1998; Cowen 2006). Despite major disagreement on the politics of war, classic liberals assume that military service is a means for the poor to repay society for their dependency. Theorists such as Locke and Bentham both outline a logic of soldiering as social service. After describing the poor as ‘the foster children of the country,’ Bentham (1843:420), for example, argues that a system of pauper workhouses would have a ‘collateral benefit of a most important nature’ providing a ‘nursery – a supplement – and in part a succedaneum – to the existing system of national defence.’ For Bentham, ‘national force’ could be strengthened ‘without effort – without disbursement – without expense to anybody’ by having paupers who live in workhouses serve in national defence on weekends and labour in the factories during the week. Contribution to society allows the poor to be deemed deserving. However, when society is nationalized, contribution takes its highest form in military service. In fact, the very notion of social rights that characterizes the post-war welfare state was rooted in a reworking rather than displacement of social obligation, and this too was tied to war. When Nikolas Rose (1999:64) asserts that within the welfare state model citizens become ‘employees of society,’ he rearticulates the arguments of Beveridge. As I argue in the following chapter, the prototypical figure for this model of socialized and nationalized work was in fact the war worker, and more specifically, the white, Anglo, male soldier. The norms of the soldier, including his social entitlements, were institutionalized in the post-war breadwinner welfare state. And indeed, the emphasis on entitlement through work or ‘workfare’ that is so characteristic of neoliberalism is also tied to military service. The recent expansion of military welfare in conjunction with the eclipse of nationalized and socialized notions of entitlement is highly significant. Social entitlement has in a sense been ‘shrunk back’ into the military, suggesting that the military is once again emerging as a form of work and citizenship for the deserving poor. As I suggest in Chapter 6, soldiers are currently (re)emerging as a model of the deserving poor. In recent years, there has been growing interest in alternative ways of thinking about the relationship between war and politics than what is outlined by Clausewitz and Huntington. Far from exceptional, war is posited as foundational to the politics of what we know as peace. In
20 Military Workfare
her treatise on violence, Hannah Arendt inverts Clausewitz’s maxim, arguing that peace must be understood as a continuation of war by other means. Her analysis is anchored in the specific effects of the Second World War on violence and power. For Arendt (1970:9), the Second World War did not end; it instead took on new forms. Foucault (1997: 49–51, 89–111) also inverts Clausewitz’s maxim, not specifically in relation to politics after the Second World War, but as a feature of the founding of the national state. For Foucault, power relations are ‘anchored’ in a ‘relationship of force that was established through war at a given historical moment that can be historically specified’; modern politics ‘sanctions and reproduces’ the inequalities that are operative in war (1997:16). War is not simply important in shaping politics; rather, war is the preface to peace. War is the engine of politics, the ‘motor behind institutions and order. In the smallest of its cogs, peace is waging a secret war … peace is itself a coded war’ (Foucault 1997:50–1). These insights have been enormously productive in recent social and political thought. Yet just as we must investigate the role of the state of exception in constituting our peace, we must also be willing to consider the role of the soldier as a figure of exception in the constitution of citizenship. When we do, a complex tangle of politics and geographies of work, war, and welfare are opened for investigation. The benefits of jumping these hurdles, of transgressing the norms of inquiry that preclude a study of soldiers and the social, are multiple. By problematizing the national scale, positing war and the soldier as foundational rather than exceptional to politics, paying close attention to the geographies of struggle within national space, and acknowledging the entwined nature of labour and citizenship, we may begin to approach the centrality of war to the historical geographies of social citizenship. Oh Canada, We Stand on Guard for Thee … This book proposes a genealogy of military citizenship in Canada focusing primarily on the period from the Second World War through to the early years of the twenty-first century. It traces shifts in the government of this important and overlooked form of national work and belonging. In the pages that follow I aim to open an area of inquiry rather than exhaust it, and thus the analysis explores some important shifts in a fairly limited time period in one country. Readers may wonder why Canada is placed at the centre of an analysis of soldiers. Canadians are often thought of as the socialist smurfs of North America, often
Introduction: The Soldier and the Social 21
cute, sometimes funny, and generally benign. Canada is certainly not known today as a military power in most parts of the world, although this may be changing in targeted regions such as Kandahar. There are nevertheless a number of reasons why Canada is ideal for exploring these themes. First, Canada has long been lodged between powerful empires, first the British and then the American. This has shaped foreign and domestic policy and makes it a fascinating vantage point on global relations of power and force. Second, Canada has not supported a very large or active military force for much of the latter part of the twentieth century; however, historically this was not the case. Not only did the country raise the largest ever known all-volunteer force during the Second World War, maintain one of the largest armies and navies for the two world wars, and participate massively in early Cold War missions, but Canada also helped define one of the most distinctive forms of twentieth-century military work – peacekeeping. Canada is playing an increasingly prominent role in the U.S.-led ‘war on terror,’ first and foremost in Afghanistan, but it is also helping build ‘Fortress North America,’ in bureaucratese known as ‘continental security integration.’ In an effort to reassert ‘northern sovereignty’ and under the leadership of General Rick Hillier the Canadian military has assumed a new machismo.6 Furthermore, while Canada may have played a lowkey global military role in recent decades, its record of deployment at home tells a different story. Military deployments against Indigenous peoples are frequent and often intense – for example, at the 1990 Oka stand-off in Quebec or Gustavsen Lake in British Columbia in 1995. Even as I finish this introduction, weblogs suggest that military personnel are organized at a local airstrip for deployment at a stand-off between the government and Six Nations at Caledonia in Ontario. The armed forces are more broadly deployed against other domestic revolts: the FLQ crisis, the protests at the 1997 APEC Summit in Vancouver, the 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, and so forth. Canada is also renowned as a leader in liberal government due largely to experiments with multiculturalism, bilingualism, and ‘diversity.’ The Canadian population is also one of the most urbanized on earth, which has particular effects on conflicts over citizenship. This history and geography make Canada an ideal context for this study of welfare, warfare, and citizenship. Many of the trends outlined in these pages are distinctly Canadian, while the core dynamics and temporalities are decidedly supranational in scale. The latter include the post-war assemblage of state welfare, the urbanization and professionalization of work throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the general
22 Military Workfare
decline in the cultural value of the national military, the contemporary dismantling of welfare, and the construction of workfare regimes. Wherever possible, the specific and general nature of such trends and analysis is noted. The organization of this book is broadly historical but with chapters defined by substantive problems and shifts in citizenship rather than strict chronological form. In Chapter 2 I outline the historical connections and political logics that link war work and national welfare. I draw on research in labour history, social policy research, feminist political economy and welfare state scholarship, and military history, and I provide analysis of primary Canadian texts including the Militia Pension Act and the Marsh Report. I demonstrate that the military actually pioneered the practice and culture of social welfare provision, which left an indelible mark on the post-war model of ‘male breadwinner’ worker-citizenship. Chapter 3 explores welfare and militarism in the immediate postwar period, occasionally iterating back to wartime problems. I argue that a common model of citizenship – the national worker-citizen – was assembled for civilians and military personnel out of mass warfare. Drawing on archival work in previously restricted national defence files, the chapter explores the deeply ingrained nature of the military and militarism in Canada from the late 1940s through the early 1960s with an examination of some unconventional and intimate citizenship practices. I outline the ongoing use of benefits to attract personnel and the conflation of personal and national security that this executed. This exchange of military service for social services was ongoing, even as the (civilian) welfare state was being assembled, up until the beginning of the recruitment crisis of the late 1960s. In Chapter 4 I examine the recruitment crisis that was unfolding throughout the 1960s. The military attributed the disastrous decline in the quality and quantity of recruits to the wide-ranging impacts of the expansion of the civilian welfare state on the labour force, and to the rising wages of civilian employment. The Canadian Forces Personnel Applied Research Unit (CFPARU) was tasked to study the problem, and this chapter draws heavily on a large archive of its reports. The CFPARU began to document the military’s increasingly marginal, social, and spatial recruitment base, and its ties to the shifting political, economic, and social geography. It was, ironically, work and welfare arrangements that had been designed during the war that fuelled these shifts. They contributed to the rise of a highly educated, urban, profes-
Introduction: The Soldier and the Social 23
sional labour force composed of more individualistic and mobile workers who had less tolerance for traditional occupational hierarchy and very little interest in the military. In contrast to its centrality in the post-war period, the military was becoming a residual and highly undesirable form of work and belonging for worker-citizens with any other choice. In Chapter 5 I examine the military’s first response to the challenge of this new liberal citizenship. This new liberalism was different from the post-war breadwinner model of worker-citizenship, and national politics were changing fast. The federal government implemented a slew of legislation throughout the 1970s and 1980s geared to protect designated groups, including women, linguistic and ethnic minorities, and racialized groups, from the state and other citizens. Individualism, diversity, and even anti-militarism were institutionalized through legislation on bilingualism, multiculturalism, women’s rights, and ‘Charter’ rights. At the same time, the military began to see ‘untapped’ human resources among immigrant groups, in communities of colour, among women, and most importantly in cities. Gradually, the Canadian Forces (CF) began a serious campaign of targeting cities and racialized citizens. By the 1980s the CF aimed to transform its labour force in response to recruitment shortages, but it also developed elaborate strategies to reform military work itself. I address these efforts in Chapter 6. Efforts were initially focused on making work relations less hierarchical while expanding individual autonomy and responsibility under the banner of ‘Quality of Working Life’ (QWL). Civilian institutions also struggled with the problems of changing workplace culture, politics, and organization, but as a major source of modern forms of discipline the military’s challenges were unique. In part concurrent with QWL initiatives, but mostly as a result of their general failure, the military began investing in more familiar workplace reform strategies. Over the course of the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, a wide range of new policies and funds have been dedicated to personnel welfare. The timing of this expansion is crucial; it has been central to the dismantling of civilian welfare. In Chapter 7 I consider changing policies and discourses of work and welfare in Canada and internationally since the 1980s. In particular, I investigate the convergence occurring between the emergent practices of ‘workfare’ and the reassertion of the military citizen. I do this through a discussion of the renewed emphasis on contribution and
24 Military Workfare
capacity in work and welfare policy, and the related resurgence of the category of the ‘undeserving poor.’ I argue that there are important and long-standing relationships between this workfarist vision of citizenship and the military. Support for military expansion and the dismantling of (civilian) welfare come from the same political parties and rationalities. Workfarism and reinvigorated militarism are dovetailing to fuel a new and improved iconicity for the soldier citizen. This investigation traverses a vast terrain of history and geography, but the overall argument is quite simple: the politics of national welfare must be understood in relation to both domestic spatial struggles regarding work, citizenship, and identity, and the international politics of the twentieth century, which are necessarily tied to war, imperialism, and the changing nature of the nation state. The constitution and reproduction of nations and nationalism through war, and through domestic struggles that emerged to build a different future, cradle our citizenship, our work, and our welfare. When we look back on the violence of the long twentieth century, the continual transformation in forms of war rather than its cessation, the promise of peace in wartime fantasies of collective and individual security, and the blood that continues to spill at home and abroad, we might think it obvious that the professional warrior should be at the centre of a story of welfare. Hidden in plain view, the soldier has been the maverick figure of social forms of citizenship.
2 The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship
There are many social and economic benefits which this war has already brought. There is, for instance, the general feeling that each and every person’s welfare, health, happiness and liberty is not merely a personal matter but the concern of the country. (Low 1943:163) The tectonic shift of postwar politics to new ground based on statecentered economic and social planning raises questions about the historical meaning of war. (Klausen 1998:8)
War is quintessentially destructive activity. War destroys bodies, homes, communities, cities, and even nations. The capacity of war to ravage physical and social environments is painfully evident both historically and today. But war doesn’t simply destroy. Perhaps more than any other single activity, war generates new practices and technologies. The challenge of violently taking things and people apart repeatedly yields new ways of putting them together. Military research and development plays a profound role in scientific and technological advance and extends far beyond the most predictable examples of weapons and communications. It is not only the immediate tools of combat or the forms of knowledge that enable and sustain military campaigns that are transformed through armed conflict. New forms of agriculture, new medicines and medical procedures, new techniques of food production, cultivation, and processing, new models of housing construction and design,1 and new forms of recreation such as computer gaming2 have all emerged out of war, their invention fuelled by the need to recruit, sustain, and reproduce the people that fight wars. Indeed, military practice has also been influential in the configuration
26 Military Workfare
of civilian work3 and labour.4 There are recurrent intersections particularly between the early development of modern military and industrial organization, with the latter generally taking cues from the earlier development of military methods.5 War is also centrally important to the historical development of social citizenship and social welfare. Very little work exists at this intersection, even as there is growing interest in the political technologies that have been engineered through war (cf. Rose 1999; Foucault 1997). Scholarship that makes implicit connections between war and welfare is, however, plentiful. A large body of research considers the historical relationships between welfare and nation building, and another, quite separately, examines the entwined dynamics of nation building and war. On the one hand, scholars outline the key role of state welfare in harnessing allegiance, collectivizing risk and identity, and producing a nationally orchestrated future (Offe 1984; Rose 1999; Brodie 2002; McEwen 2002). On the other hand, they have shown that war builds nations; that it is typically through war that the territory and hegemonic identity of the nation state is assembled (Tilly 1985; Hobsbawm 1990). A combined reading of these literatures places the national geography of citizenship at the centre of the entwined history of welfare and war. In this chapter I argue that war has been a central influence in the emergence of social citizenship. I document how historically war has provoked new relationships between the state and citizens. National identity became salient through mass war when national risk sharing became a necessity. Thus, one particularly powerful legacy of war is that people become a people. Mass war provided a singular project and demanded a unified polity organized around the cause of national work. Labouring for the nation became both an obligation of citizenship but also a means for categorizing, organizing, and othering citizens. Indeed, the soldier can be understood as a national labourer par excellence, but also a figure that has been highly gendered and racialized, and centrally implicated in experimentation in workplace discipline. War is not simply a temporary suspension of economic, social, and political norms but a moment of radical experimentation in social order with lasting effects after the declaration of peace. I develop these arguments through an active rereading of scholarship on war, the nation state, and social welfare, and an analysis of some key primary texts in Canadian welfare state history. My reading aims to bring these literatures into direct and productive conversation. It suggests that the dynamic of warfare and welfare can be understood
The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 27
only if the national geographies of citizenship are questioned instead of assumed. Second, I trace the long and sometimes forgotten military histories of social policy. These histories trouble the common assumption that the story of social citizenship is a civilian one. I argue that the exclusion of the soldier from scholarly accounts of social welfare has intellectual and political consequences, and I replace this figure at the centre of the story. Third, I investigate common historical accounts of the emergence of the Canadian welfare state, and contrast these civilian narratives with an alternative military history. Putting the soldier at the centre of social welfare allows us to see the post-war order as simultaneously a capitalist economic project, a national geographic project, and a gendered, racialized, and deeply biopolitical project of citizenship. The iconic citizen of post-war welfare was organized around a wartime model of the national worker. This accounts for the emphasis on contribution through work in post-war welfarism and the masculine patriotic figure at its core. It also troubles the popular distinction between ‘entitlement’ and ‘obligation’ based citizenship. National Welfare ... To this day it remains common practice for scholars to describe the welfare state as a nation-building project that followed from alreadyexisting nationalisms. In other words, the welfare state is understood to have emerged ‘inside’ the nation state. Geographic space is typically taken for granted in the organization of politics, and the nation state figures as a pre-given ‘container’ of political relations. This CartesianKantian treatment of geographic space dominates much modern social scientific inquiry, but is also the subject of extensive critique in the work of geographers. An influential body of scholarship has emerged that sees human geographies as historically produced rather than naturally given.6 In this work, the nation state becomes a problem to explain rather than an assumption from which to proceed. This work has been particularly instructive in problematizing spatial scale in recent years. Rather than assuming that a given set of activities or relations ‘belong’ to a particular scale, this literature questions how social relations become constituted as naturalized spatial relations.7 This shift towards thinking about the production of space and scale took place alongside a growing scrutiny of nationalism as a distinct socio-spatial and cultural form across the social sciences and humanities.8 With this combined work it is increasingly possible to say that the nation state is
28 Military Workfare
no longer taken for granted as the assumed organizing framework of politics and identity. Building on these more nuanced readings of space and politics, welfare state scholarship has begun to question its own assumed geographies. Path-breaking work now suggests that the welfare state was a nationalizing project that worked to wed national territory and national belonging, recreating both anew in the process (McEwen 2002; Moreno and McEwen 2003). Here, state welfare is not a tool for governing already-constituted political collectivities. Rather, it takes on an active role in engineering allegiance to a particular vision of the future, one that is planned by the state and organized around a particular geographic imaginary. As part of this questioning of the space of the nation, there has been a marked return to classic texts on social citizenship for new scrutiny. For example, Wincott (2003:312) recently argued that ‘the national dimension of T.H. Marshall’s analysis of social citizenship is often neglected’ (emphasis in original). This neglect persists despite the fact that Marshall (1950:95) asserts very directly that ‘the citizenship whose history I wish to trace is, by definition, national.’ By creating a direct relationship between the citizen and ‘the nation’ through policies administered by state institutions, welfare made the state personal and intimate as well as tangible and material. In this way it recruited allegiance. Organizing political identity at the national scale was a core achievement of the welfare state. Class, religious, and regional identities were the mainstay of collective political life well into the nineteenth and even early twentieth centuries in Europe. The national was not a natural scale of identity but the product of concerted social work. State welfare proved to be an effective means of working towards this goal. When a homogeneous cultural tradition cannot be identified or invented, some form of national identity can be premised on institutional or civic traditions instead. This has been particularly important in a country like Canada, where national identity has been a precarious affair, troubled by competing regional, ethno-nationalist, and linguistic projects. Janine Brodie (2002:383) argues that the welfare state and social citizenship in Canada played a defining role in fostering panCanadian nationalism. ‘The idea of social citizenship,’ she suggests, ‘was conflated with federally inspired discourses of pan-Canadian nationalism … The Canadian state … has played an inordinate role in trying to shape a national identity and to underwrite national unity in order to contain sub-national and ethnic conflicts and to build support
The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 29
for its many nation-building projects.’ Canadian multiculturalism could emerge within a nationalist framework, as state welfare allowed political and civic traditions to replace ethno-nationalism as the organizing framework of national identity. The social rights of citizenship replaced blood and soil as the basis for a national imaginary. Religious, ethno-racial, linguistic, and regional heterogeneity were important forms of social difference managed and mediated by the universalizing aspirations of the welfare state; however, class was particularly critical. In fact, Donzelot argues that the earliest experiments with modern social insurance took place in Europe in the 1880s in direct response to the class conflicts that were becoming a threat to the social order. At this time, Bismarck implemented the first state-run social insurance programs and showed that ‘subversion can be combated only by freeing the state from the so-called liberal definition which limits its role to guaranteeing the established order – an easy target for revolutionaries – and by realizing its true vocation as society’s cement’ (Donzelot 1988:398). Social insurance gave the state an active role in shaping society. Insurance forged a relationship between the state and the individual, collectivizing the very risks of accident, injury, and old age that were intensified in industrial capitalist society. Insurance appealed to the working classes who were regularly injured in factory work, Donzelot argues, and for whom the individualism of liberalism couldn’t account for the classed nature of bodily injury. It is not incidental that these transformations were furthermore taking shape in a rapidly urbanizing context where the possibilities for the small-scale charitable relief and by-your-own-bootstraps self-sufficiency of rural life were heavily constricted. Early social insurance schemes mediated but did not resolve the political-economic cleavages of industrial capitalism, and in his classic 1950 lectures, Citizenship and Social Class, T.H. Marshall explored the role of a fuller notion of social citizenship as a way forward. Through this work, social rights were given a name and political force as the logical and necessary ‘progression’ of national citizenship. In Marshall’s account, social citizenship followed the initiation of legal rights in the eighteenth century, and political rights in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The narrative has been rightly critiqued for universalizing the experiences of the white, male, European worker-citizen (Fraser and Gordon 1992). Nevertheless, Marshall’s story is important when understood firmly in that particular rather than universal context. Marshall asked four questions that highlight fundamental tensions
30 Military Workfare
in the Keynesian welfare state project, and which foreshadow its eventual demise. Marshall asked, first, whether political equality could be created without ‘invading’ the free market; second, whether principles of social entitlement could coexist with the inequalities of a free market; third, what the effects would be of a shift from political duties to rights; and lastly, whether there were limits to the modern drive to equality (1950:93). Marshall suggested that with the development of social citizenship, the nation state was invested with the enormous task of striking a balance between the individual and the collective, between capitalism and democracy, between equality and difference, and between security and risk. The national welfare state was therefore a political-geographic resolution to competing social and economic priorities of the period. It would achieve something of an ideal economy of scale with regard to socio-economic risk, and aimed to strike a delicate balance between the equality that democracy demanded and the economic difference produced by capitalism. Habermas (1990) has also described the post–Second World War welfare state in this way – as a class compromise that was temporarily mediated through the national state. The welfare state did not supplant class politics but modified the extremes of class conflict so that the equality of one tempered the discord of the other. By offering concessions of social and economic rights, welfare encouraged the working class to feel a stake in the national state, even while one of welfare’s primary effects was to disarm radical political movements. However, welfare did not work primarily through trickery or deceit, even if its core promises of security and universality were never actualized. Rather, the welfare state instituted itself through bargain and compromise: The capitalist economy – this is the lesson to be learned from Keynesianism – is a positive sum game. Therefore, playing as one would in a zero sum game is against one’s own interests. That is to say, each class has to take the interests of the other class into consideration: the workers must acknowledge the importance of profitability, because only a sufficient level of profit and investment will secure future employment and income increases; and the capitalists must accept the need for wages and welfare state expenditures, because these will secure effective demand and a healthy, welltrained, well-housed and happy working-class. (Offe 1984:194)
One of the primary achievements of state welfare was to found a notion of the nation as a socio-cultural and political-economic collectivity
The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 31
that was capable of supplanting the intolerable extremes of capitalist risk and relations. In terms of its effects on personal political identity, the welfare state enabled the coexistence of competing allegiance to both class identity, conceived as a social phenomenon, and national identity, conceptualized as immutable. The welfare state is thus heavily implicated in an entwined material and symbolic production of the nation state; welfare expedited the nationalization of identities and institutions and provided an ideal of national social rights to counter the polarizing effects of industrial capitalism. ... National Warfare There is also a very clear and strong relationship between the historical constitution of nation states and war (Tilly 1985; Hobsbawm 1990; Horner 1995).9 War played a critical role in assembling both the physical territories and political imaginaries of nation states. The very genesis of the nation state as a meaningful form of collectivity is deeply bound up with the mobilization of that collectivity in international conflict. War does not simply exercise existing nationalisms, but often produces them anew. Military service and conscription became a core political obligation of citizenship during the consolidation of modern European nations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Cohen 1985; Mann 1988). The levée en masse following the French Revolution set a highly influential precedent of national conscription, which came to define modern militaries. Conscription and mass participation in national warfare played a definitive role in the consolidation of national identity (Tilly 1975). Indeed, Clausewitz’s writings responded largely to the striking new military discipline and strategic formation that came with Napoleon’s citizen army. In the 1870s the vast majority of the population of small towns and rural areas did not regard themselves as members of the French nation, but by the First World War this had changed dramatically (Moreno and McEwen 2003). The First World War fashioned a new national geography of political identity, and the period following was also one of major flux in Europe as the formal boundaries of nation states were redrawn in the wake of the Ottoman Empire and in response to the Russian Revolution. Hobsbawm (1990:131) has argued that ‘if there was a moment when the nineteenth century “principle of nationality” triumphed it was at the end of World War 1.’ This period was also increasingly definitive in terms of nationalizing the very prospect of life and death. In a prescient argument, Hannah
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Arendt (1951) documents how the nation-state system that was devised in Europe after the First World War furthermore created the very problem of stateless peoples. The making of all political rights contingent on national citizenship helped set the stage for the atrocities to come. She details how, paradoxically, this loss of national rights was both a precondition and an actualization of the loss of human rights. The creation of mutually exclusive absolute spaces of state sovereignty, through the hardening of national borders under the flag of human rights, created the conditions whereby the loss of national citizenship could equal the loss of human rights. For Arendt, the nationalization of rights in the inter-war period created the crisis of ‘bare life’ and paved the way for the Holocaust a few years later. The First World War was also the first experience of modern mass war where the boundaries between military and civilian worlds became deeply blurred. The dismantled distinction between military and civilian life had particularly notable implications for the rise of a mass national political culture. The mass army became an important model for large-scale mobilization of collective, national objectives after the war. The First World War, ‘a war of mass armies par excellence,’ asserts van Doorn, ‘taught the political leaders how to mobilize great masses of people and resources’ (1975:55). These lessons would come in handy after the war; specifically, this skill of mass mobilization was ‘a technique which was later utilized in peace time for domestic purposes.’ Mass war yielded new political technologies that were put to direct use in the post-war period. The growth of the state was an important legacy of both world wars and facilitated the centralization of economic and social policy. Conscription and wartime labour force planning were crucial to the expansion of the national state during the Second World War. Production, prices, consumption, and distribution were all tightly planned and controlled, and the effects were sustained in a variety of ways after the war. Rose (1999:77) describes how these challenges gave rise to new forms of government: The objectives of this enhanced involvement of political authorities in the productive life of the nation were straightforward – the construction of the machinery of warfare such as tanks, planes, ships, weapons and the like, the maintenance of supply of material, and the production of the necessities of life on the home front. But the mode of government it entailed was novel. A manpower policy was required to ensure the most effective allocation of human resources to the various branches of the war effort in the fighting
The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 33 forces and in the factories. Maximum efficiency and productivity needed to be maintained, over a long period without deleterious effects on the physical or human resources of production. Interruptions to the production process by strikes, disputes, lock-outs, illness, labour turnover, absenteeism, or slacking had to be minimized. And all this had to be done in a manner that maintained morale at home and did not infringe the principles of liberty and democracy upon which morale depended.
Mass war gave rise to nationally organized ‘social machines.’ The centralized planning that became so critical during the Second World War was sustained afterwards in the national regulation of economies, labour forces, and citizenship (Klausen 1998:9; Kirwin 1996:206). Freedoms and rights were heavily curtailed, but national ‘human resources’ were maximized and the productivity of industry soared. On the one hand, modern war has defined territorial and ideological borders of nation states. On the other hand, modern war has produced new social and political forms that have reshaped peacetime political life. But rather than separate ‘inputs’ to nation building, state welfare and national war need to be considered in direct relation to each other. In fact, warfare, welfare, and nation can be understood as a powerful trinity that has fundamentally shaped the trajectory of modern citizenship. War Work for Welfare In highly general terms, Foucault addressed the peculiar and striking dynamic that connects the politics of welfare and warfare through the modern state’s power over life and death. He is perhaps the bestknown theorist of the historical expansion of the state’s concern for the biological welfare of populations. Economically identifying this paradoxical style of government, he writes: ‘If we think about the way in which the modern state began to worry about individuals – about the lives of individuals – there is a paradox to this history. At the same moment the state began to practice its greatest slaughters, it began to worry about the physical and mental health of each individual … This game between death and life is one of the main paradoxes of the modern state’ (1989:209). Foucault’s later work on ‘biopolitics’ and biopower10 captures much of the schematic intrigue of this welfare-warfare tango. Biopower emerged with the modern state as a form of power that both individualizes subjects through discipline while it simultaneously creates and governs ‘populations’ (see Rabinow and Rose 2003). It is the govern-
34 Military Workfare
ment of the life of the population, its maximization, that is of central concern to biopolitics. As such, biopolitics focuses on securing the health and welfare of the population through interventions such as social insurance and social welfare (Collier and Lakoff 2006). Biopolitics, in all its concern for life, is paradoxically tethered tightly to war. In the constitution of population and the state racism of ‘nation’ that it yields, a competitive survivalism manifests itself and is exercised in war abroad as much as through the domestic violence of eugenics and other purifying techniques (Dillon 2004). While Foucault and those working in his tradition offer a sophisticated theoretical literature that explores these themes, scholarship that makes forceful connections between war and welfare predates Foucault’s interventions by several decades. The rise of politics fuelled by a highly instrumental maximization of ‘human capital’ during war has been the subject of inquiry for a few scholars writing during and after the Second World War. Writing during the Second World War, A.M. Low (1943:164) suggests that the welfare of the national population becomes ‘recognized by our rulers, for in war-time it is vitally necessary to make the maximum use of “man-power” and to maintain high morale.’ Welfare state historian Richard Titmuss echoed this claim in a 1958 book chapter entitled ‘War and Social Policy.’ Titmuss argues that at times of war, nation states develop a keen interest in the biological and psychological characteristics of the population. He outlines how Western states were historically plagued by a concern, first, with the simple quantity of men (to fight as soldiers), to the quality of minds and bodies of recruits, to a concern for the general civilian population (in the interest of ensuring decentquality future recruits), and most recently, to an increasingly scientific concern with the morale of the population (to maintain popular support for national struggle). Titmuss (1958:22) argues that war has been the single most important driving force in the creation of social policy. ‘In scale, depth and in time,’ he writes, ‘war has been waged more intensively and ferociously. This crescendo in the organization of war has enveloped a larger proportion of the total population and … has left its marks on them for a longer period of time.’ Since the midnineteenth century he notes an ‘increasing concern of the State in time of war with the biological characteristics of its people. The growing scale and intensity of war has stimulated a growing concern about the quantity and quality of the population.’ Titmuss notes a range of innovations in social policy that had their
The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 35
genesis in war, from national health services, which took shape during the Boer War and were eventually generalized for the civilian population in the United Kingdom, to the popularization of the mental health professions through the management of recruitment and combat readiness in the United States in the Second World War. From these and other examples, Titmuss draws an important conclusion: that civilian welfare policy is a generalization of military social policy (1958:82). This generalization occurred as a result of mass warfare, when the very boundaries between soldier and citizen were blurred and thus common forms of policy were generated. This took place in a definitive way during the Second World War because national populations were completely swept up in the war efforts; thus the management of public morale became an essential aspect of governing effective warfare and wartime production (see also Rose 1999:27). In such a short essay Titmuss does not explore the complex convergence of factors that made this historical moment ripe for the consolidation of the post-war welfare state; however, he is firm in his description of what transpired during and after the Second World War: The distinctions and privileges, accorded to those in uniform in previous wars, were greatly diminished. Comprehensive systems of medical care and rehabilitation, for example, had tos be organized by the state for those who were injured or disabled. They could not be exclusively reserved for soldiers and sailors, as in the past, but had to be extended to include civilians as well – to those injured in the factories as well as the victims of bombing. The Emergency Medical Service, initially designed to cater for a special section of the population, became in the end the prototype of a medical service for the whole population. (Titmuss 1958:83)
And yet, despite this powerful articulation fifty years ago by a wellknown scholar, the specific and sustained connections between welfare and warfare remain somewhat enigmatic. Other scholars have since explored elements of this coupling, for instance, documenting the genesis of specific social policies in the military in particular national contexts (Offe 1984; Skocpol 1992; Dutton 2002; Kirwin 1996; Kelly 1997), but these accounts are not centrally concerned with the welfarewarfare connection. I suggest that revisiting these histories and assembling them differently allows new insights to surface. The military becomes a progenitor of social policy and thus a central thread in a genealogy of state welfare and social rights.
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Pensions and Personnel Innovations in social welfare through war have been profound in Western capitalist nation states. Of course, Bismarck was not only a key figure in the early experiments with social insurance but a key military leader credited with the unification of the German state. In his quest to mobilize and unify the support of a population divided by class and region for the nation, social insurance became a crucial technology. His army relied upon mass participation and mass loyalty to fight wars in Europe and to colonize people and places in Africa. It was Bismarck, after all, who hosted the 1884–5 Congress of Berlin, which sought to regulate the European colonization of the African continent. The passage of his social legislation ‘provided a unifying catalyst that called for the end to provincialism (and thus the end of localism) and the beginnings of the modern nation state’ (Kirwin 1996:205). In this context, pensions were an effective and efficient means of harnessing the loyalty of war workers to the German state. If they were ‘protected from injury, given pensions, and their families looked after,’ Kirwin writes, ‘they would be more willing to give totally to the war effort.’ Military pensions also played a definitive role in the history of social policy in the United States. The earliest foray of the U.S. government into the realm of social policy took place during the Civil War, and it was this conjuncture that established both the institutional infrastructure and precedent for later developments. Theda Skocpol (1992) has documented how wartime need led to the development of a dual system of soldiers’ pensions and mothers’ allowances. Wartime pensions for soldiers and mothers’ allowances helped ease the extremes of war work for serving personnel and their families and in this way sustained their loyalty to the government. Others have made parallel arguments about the role of military pensions in the history of U.S. social policy, but trace their genesis to an earlier moment. Clark et al. (2002:2–3) suggest that American colonies provided pensions since their earliest days to men disabled while defending the colonies from Native uprisings. This coverage was extended to militiamen during the Revolutionary War, and the Continental Congress established pensions for the army and navy independent of the activities of the colonial legislatures. These scholars argue that this history ‘shows how Congress used pensions to provide replacement income for soldiers injured in battle, to offer performance incentives, to arrange for orderly retirements, and to respond to political pressures.’
The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 37
Key innovations in social security in France have also been tied to welfare provision both during wartime and for military personnel specifically. Dutton outlines the initiation of both the salaire vital and family allowances, when the Groupe des Industries de la Region de Paris (GIRP) ‘worked closely with the government to pacify labor unrest during the final year of the war when strikes reached their wartime height’ (Dutton 2002:16). But Dutton proceeds to outline even earlier precedents for the salaire vital and family allowance that come out of military welfarism. He writes: At the time of the levée en masse in 1793, soldiers were provided with additional pay for wives, children under twelve, fathers over sixty, and widowed mothers of any age. War allowances (allocations de guerre) were abolished at the time of the Restoration, but reemerged in various military and pronatalist legislation under the Third Republic … [Picquenard and Oualid] merely followed the logic of total war that had been created by the industrial age. Whereas only those serving under the colors (and a small number of civil servants) had previously been eligible for family allowances, now all munitions workers merited the same benefits as their brothers in arms. (Dutton 2002:17)
In Canada, the model for militia pensions was inherited from the British, and they have existed since 1812 and the early colonial militias (Morton and Wright 1987:10). In their modern incarnation, Canadian militia pensions can be dated back to 1901. Official rationales for early pensions reveal the crisp political logic that called for special collective services to be developed for soldiers. Text from a 1938 policy restructuring of the Militia Pension Act makes clear the ways that pensions provided a concrete solution to personnel problems, and is worth quoting a some length: In most classes of professional or commercial employment it is possible for the individual to look forward to spending the whole of his life up to the age of 60, or perhaps later, in the exercise of his chosen career and during that time it is open to him by wise savings, by life assurances, or by other methods, to provide for his needs after retirement from active life. The whole raison d’être of the Defence Services, however, is preparation for the rigours of active service, and for this reason there must inevitably be a premium upon comparative youth. The higher posts in the three Services are obviously limited in number, and must necessarily bear a small
38 Military Workfare proportion to the whole body of officers, and it follows that a considerable number of those officers cannot expect to be retained in the Services much beyond middle age rank. We are satisfied that, the objects of the Services being what they are, this position cannot be altered, but if a young man is to be attracted into a profession from which he may have to be retired on pension in middle age through no fault of his own, it is clear that his financial and other conditions of life up to that age, and his prospects thereafter, must receive special consideration.11
Local, voluntary charity initiatives run by religious and private groups certainly predate these initiatives, but military pensions constitute the first national, state-run social policies in these countries and others. Military pensions date back a century or more before their civilian counterparts. Pensions were developed and deployed to compensate soldiers for the extreme labour of war work, and thus were a critical means of managing this highly specialized labour force and its morale. Pensions for personnel became increasingly important and costly as the nature and technologies of war changed in the early twentieth century. The scale of death and destruction during the First World War was not novel; however, the number of wounded soldiers that survived was. New forms of weaponry combined with advances in military medicine to send more bodies home from the front wounded instead of dead. Growing numbers of veterans came to rely on military pensions for basic welfare (Morton and Wright 1987:10). While the existence of military pensions can be traced back at least to the Roman Empire, they acquired a newfound importance in the context of the emerging nation-state system (Clark et al. 2002:2). Widespread misconceptions suggest that the history of pensions is a history of civilian policies. The exclusion of military practice leads to a brief and partial account of the practice, even among specialists of welfare history. The perception that employer-provided pensions in the United States are a recent invention is only accurate ‘concerning private pensions and most public pensions for civilian employees,’ Clark et al. (2002:5) argue, whereas ‘pensions for disabled and retired military personnel predate the signing of the U.S. Constitution.’ This confusion pertains not only to the U.S. context but much more broadly. ‘Military pensions have a long history in Western civilization,’ they assert, ‘and have often been used as a key element to attract, retain and motivate military personnel.’ One effect of this bracketing of military practice from pension history is that welfare historians construct continuities in their narratives
The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 39
between the charity practices that existed in sub-national communities prior to national welfare states and the ‘universal’ and rights-based forms that define the latter. This can produce a developmental narrative of an increasingly humanitarian state committed to more inclusive provision over time. However, this tale is empirically inaccurate and politically disingenuous given that these kinds of practices have clear precedent in military policy. Military history offers a more cynical account of the emergence and uses of pensions. Pensions for military personnel were a means of building national allegiance, maintaining loyalty, ensuring health and welfare, and managing labour markets. In other words, pensions facilitated the state’s management of nationalized ‘human resources’ to wage war. ‘Mothers of the Nation’: Engineering Entitlement War and military practice have also been the catalysts for a number of other transformations in social citizenship that predate the formal constitution of a welfare state. This is particularly the case in the realm of ‘dependents’ policies. In Canada, it was actually the wives and mothers of soldiers that were some of the earliest activists to promote a sense of entitlement to welfare benefits. Feminist historian Nancy Christie documents how working-class women referred to wartime assistance during the First World War as a right in relation to the work of ‘mothering the nation.’ They demanded compensation for the sacrifice of their husbands, sons, and the wages that they would usually bring home. These women connected their sacrifice and substitute labour to the state for which they were working, and made demands. ‘This Fund is not charity,’ one woman asserted regarding her wartime dependent’s assistance. ‘At least, if it is such mine can be stopped for all time as I have never had to accept charity … If I was not entitled to it I would let it drop’ (quoted in Christie 2000:80). Indeed, the initiation of federal family policy took place during the First World War under the auspices of the Canadian Patriotic Fund (CPF). The CPF was actually initiated during the Boer War as a private organization to help the wives and children of volunteer recruits. During the First World War it expanded into a large-scale national relief organization with lasting impact on social policy in Canada. Christie (2000:80) argues that the CPF ‘formed the kernel of a much more radical conception of redistributing national income on the basis of family size’ rather than voluntarism based on absolute dire need. While the
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policies of the CPF were not sustained or generalized after the war, they did create a precedent for a national mode and scale of provision, and for rights-based benefits. As the emphasis on mothering suggests, family welfare has long been a formative dimension of national social policy. Managing the labour of biological reproduction has been a core concern of modern states, particularly in times of heightened nationalism such as war. Concern for biological reproduction has prompted the gendering of welfare policy. Women’s bodies have been of sustained interest to states concerned with guaranteeing a strong national future because of their centrality in the reproduction of the nation’s people (Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989:100–2). As Ross (1998:208) writes, ‘Women function both practically and symbolically to guarantee a number of nationalisms.’ While women ‘serve’ the nation and are positioned within it in many different ways that vary across and within nation states, they are understood to play a central role in biological as well as ideological and social reproduction. Feminist scholars have outlined how ‘pro-natalist’ policies have been a common feature of nationalism with states entering into baby races to replenish their ranks. In Canada, concern for infant mortality rates came to be seen through a lens of national security during the First World War. Social welfare advocates mobilized around this fear for the national future, comparing high infant mortality rates in Canada to those of other countries. High infant mortality rates were ‘criminal at any time,’ according to one welfare advocate writing during the First World War, ‘but with the nation losing 13,031 men in 1916, and 22,608 in 1917 by the deaths in the overseas forces, it is suicidal.’12 This urgent sense of threat to national human resources provoked the expansion of a range of social services. The CPF made this very case for domestic welfare provision, arguing that the war effort depended on the well-being of soldiers’ families. The 1915 CPF report, for example, asserted that those on the home front ‘must work for the welfare of the families of the brave men who have placed their bodies between us and the German bullets! We must work for the welfare of their children who will be our future citizens and soldiers!’ (quoted in Christie 2000:56). While the First World War was an occasion for significant experimentation in social policy, none of the new programs that emerged was extended beyond the bounds of veterans and their dependents. Significant social policy developments took shape during the war, but these benefits never became ‘universal,’ nor were they understood as an
The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 41
entitlement of citizenship. Given the kind of argument put forward by Titmuss, that mass war allowed for a generalization of military welfare for civilians, this begs the question of why a ‘post-war welfare state’ of the kind we associate with the post–Second World War period did not emerge after the First World War. There are identifiable reasons why this mass war did not have anything like the effects to come with the Second World War in terms of the broader regime of citizenship. One key difference between these two moments was the scale of social struggles that defined each. The expansion of policy that occurred during the First World War was largely a result of the instrumental needs of government and the lobbying of welfare professionals, rather than the forceful or large-scale demands of citizens for services. Military widows and wives did lobby successfully for family support and pensions, and these policies came to have an impact on the design of universal mothers’ allowances during the Second World War. However, in contrast to the mostly individual and professional demands for dependents’ benefits made during the First World War, labour and women’s groups placed collective organized demands on the state during the Second World War. For example, the Ex-Servicemen’s Widows Association and the Canadian Soldiers Non-Pensioned Widows Association successfully lobbied the federal government for an independent right to a war service pension (Christie 2000:252). The First World War did not see the massive surge in the strength of labour and labour-supported political parties, unlike what would come two decades later. This was in part because of the relative inexperience of Canadian labour movements in organizing at a national scale (Morton 1998:103). However, this was also a particular feature of the Canadian government’s labour strategy during the war. In contrast to the French and British approach of supporting labour during war in order to maintain loyalty, the staunchly conservative Canadian government took a much more disciplinarian ‘stick’ rather than ‘carrot’ approach to labour relations. The First World War was ‘an embittering experience for Canadian workers and their union leaders,’ Morton (1998:103) writes. The combination of high prices outpacing wages, heavy demands on workers with few corresponding gains, and the exclusion of workers and unions from consultation in government planning pushed labour into an increasingly frustrated and oppositional stance. Morton argues that by the end of the war a ‘widespread sense of grievance allowed radicals to shatter the unity of the Trades and Labour Congress. A protest movement was born that the traditional, sober, cautious labourism of the congress could not contain’ (1998:101–2).
42 Military Workfare
The First World War was not a time of gains for or through organized labour, but it did provide the necessary experience of organizing at the national scale, which would prove highly effective during the next world war. Labour made effective demands during the Second World War and helped establish a model of worker-citizenship. However, before delving into that crucial period and the massive reform of national politics that took shape through the force of organized wartime labour, the social upheaval of the 1930s requires some scrutiny. The 1930s was a crucial period for reorienting citizens’ expectations from government. The extreme hardship of the Great Depression and the political experimentation that occurred in response convinced large segments of the population that an alternative to the status quo of liberal capitalism was not only possible but also necessary. The ‘Bennett New Deal’ and the Inter-War Years Popular narratives identify the Depression as the linchpin in the development of the welfare state. They tell of a concerned national government responding to a distressed population as the kernel logic for the massive expansion of state welfare. This perception rests on a romantic reading of state practice and a selective reading of both the history of policy and its governing logics. This is not to say that the Depression had no importance, but rather to ask about the nature of its importance for the constitution of the Canadian welfare state. Public outcry and union activism did place demands on government in response to the dire economic situation in the 1930s. Governments also did respond with large-scale works programs and new forms of national regulation of the economy. Most renowned in this regard, and probably largely responsible for generating the common sense about the definitive role of the Depression years, is actually the New Deal programs in the United States. These programs mobilized massive levels of public investment and entailed an unprecedented scale of government coordination of society and economy. However, even in the U.S. context, they cannot be considered definitive in the construction of social citizenship. The New Deal and the works and relief programs implemented in other countries during the Depression had little to do with changing notions of citizenship, as I argue below, but were premised on a residual notion of aid. Works and relief programs of the Depression era were organized around a notion of entitlement to resources by virtue of citizenship, but were instead designed to get large numbers of people back to work.
The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 43
Canadian legislation of the 1930s was even less impressive than the U.S. New Deal in terms of consolidating social citizenship rights. Canada’s version of the New Deal, known as the ‘Bennett New Deal’ after the then prime minister, Richard Bedford Bennett, had only minor impacts on policy and citizenship. The Bennett New Deal is sometimes cited in scholarly literature as a foundational plan for Canadian welfare state policy (see, for example, Blake and Keshen 1995; Finkel 1977). Indeed, as a plan Bennett’s legislation was sweeping and consisted of some important forms of experimentation with the national coordination of the economy and labour force. It also spelled out significant new rights for workers. In January 1935, Bennett delivered a series of live radio speeches describing core features of his New Deal plan, which included a more progressive taxation system, a maximum work week, minimum-wage legislation, better regulation of working conditions, (means-tested) unemployment insurance, health and accident insurance, a revised (means-tested) old age pension, and agricultural support programs. The instrumental value of these reforms was starkly evident when Bennett wrote in 1935 that a ‘good deal of pruning is sometimes necessary to save a tree and it would be well for us in Canada to remember that there is considerable pruning to be done if we are to preserve the fabric of the capitalist system’ (quoted in Finkel 1977:227). However, the policies that were actually implemented paled in comparison to the plan. Policies were not only weak compared to their American counterparts but also short-lived. This was largely because the motivation for Bennett’s New Deal was the precarious position of the Conservative Party in the election polls as a result of the Depression. Bennett and his Conservative Party lost re-election later that same year to the Liberal government of William Lyon Mackenzie King. Of the eight pieces of legislation introduced under the Bennett plan, six were invalidated immediately following the election. King’s most significant act as incoming prime minister was authorizing the Privy Council to dismantle Bennett’s New Deal legislation. Thus, in Canada, Morton (1998:158) asserts, ‘the sound of Roosevelt’s New Deal was little more than an echo.’ In a fitting and widely cited statement, King would declare in 1936, ‘It is what we prevent rather than what we do that counts most in Government.’ Irrespective of the size or scale of policies introduced at this time, what distinguishes the interventions of the 1930s from the welfarist policies to come was that they were means-tested rather than rightsbased. Welfarism and social citizenship are defined not simply by the existence of policies and programs but by the social right or ‘universal’
44 Military Workfare
entitlement that governs them. Social policy is not such a precise term. It has been practised in accordance with a range of political rationalities over time and across space. It does not refer to a particular style of government but rather to the existence of politically mandated government programs. Social policy becomes a constitutive element of social citizenship when it is structured on principles of universality and entitlement. The welfare state came into being when policies were implemented at a national scale and practised according to a logic of social citizenship. It is the ‘shift in emphasis from charity to entitlement,’ Struthers (1998:179) asserts, that is the central ‘turn in the construction of the welfare state. The idea of universality is perhaps its strongest building block. Services or income transfers delivered comprehensively to all citizens on the basis of defined social rights or entitlements, rather than selectively to the few on the basis of poverty or abject need.’ It is crucial to note here that the shift to the language and logic of ‘universalism’ in social policy that characterized the emergence of the welfare state never saw universality achieved in practice. Feminist critics have made it patently clear that the ‘universal’ citizen was never neutral or fully inclusive (Young 1990; Pateman 1992; Fraser 1993). The citizen of the welfare state was described in abstract and universal terms but was informed in practice by particularities that were simultaneously economic, cultural, gendered, and racialized (Ruddick 1993). The universal logic of the welfare state did have productive force and particular effects, even as universality was not one of them. Universalism organized policy in the name of the nation’s ‘people-in-general’ (Rose 1996:328; Cowen 2005a:337). The 1930s thus proved to be an important time of experimentation with national-scale programs and with the roles of citizens and the state. However, it was not the occasion for the initiation of social citizenship rights. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the reforms proposed during the Depression were weak or never fully implemented, they did have the effect of proposing alternative political trajectories. These reforms, like those of Maynard Keynes, may have been ‘too radical for the 1930s,’ as Morton (1998:187) has argued; however, ‘by late WWII, circumstances had changed and the time was right.’ With the start of the Second World War, the possibility of organizing national political life differently wasn’t simply an intriguing possibility but a widespread and forceful demand.
The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 45
Mass Warfare, Mass Welfare The modern soldier is not, as formerly, a mere fighting machine; the distinction between soldier and civilian is being broken down; both are mixed up together in the modern fighting line. (R.S. Lambert, 1943, quoted in Christie 2000:266)
A massive expansion of social security and social welfare took shape during and after the Second World War. Guest (1997:103) argues that it wasn’t until the end of this war that a residual approach to social security was replaced with an institutional approach. In other words, it was through war that a sense of entitlement to policies and programs was instituted. The timing is a result of both the specific nature of this mass war and the confluence of political change taking place at this particular time. The scale of sacrifice made by a majority of citizens during the war, the heightened sense of national collectivity achieved through war efforts, and the recent memory of the Depression, together with a highly organized labour movement and the serious threat posed by socialist and social democratic movements to governing parties, combined to create a massive expansion of social welfare and security. Changing popular responses to proposals for post-war reconstruction signal the importance of the Second World War for galvanizing support for new notions of a social welfare state. The Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations was convened in 1937 and produced the Rowell-Sirois Commission Report in 1940. The report hardly created a ripple in popular political discourse, despite the fact that it proposed dramatic changes to the terms of citizenship (Guest 1987:207). The Rowell-Sirois Commission emphasized a conflation of individual and national social security in and through an insurance state. The commission declared, ‘Social insurance, as the commonly accepted way that modern industrial economies deal with social security, has been justified by not only humanitarian and economic arguments but by the necessity of keeping the very political and social system intact’ (quoted in Brodie 2002:383). Only three years after the release of the Rowell-Sirois Commission Report, an essentially similar plan for reconstruction, the Marsh Report, galvanized massive public support for change. Growing fatigue of the sacrifices of war helped shift popular opinion over the course of only three years, such that essentially similar proposals received wildly different receptions (Guest 1987:207).
46 Military Workfare
Organized labour was also central to the growth in popular support for large-scale reconstruction plans anchored in a notion of social entitlement. When Canada’s war production efforts peaked in the early 1940s, labour was in short supply. The tightly controlled labour market achieved full employment, which increased workers’ bargaining strength. One effect of this increasing bargaining power was a surge in confidence among workers for the possibilities of their collective actions. According to Morton (1998:180), it ‘encouraged displays of boldness which might have seemed impossible a few years earlier.’ Canada’s labour movement doubled under wartime labour conditions and organized crippling strikes in 1941 and 1943 (Struthers 1998:182). In 1939, McInnis (2002:43) reports, membership in Canadian trade unions was 359,000, but this figure reached more than 831,000 by the end of 1946. This growth was particularly apparent in industrial sectors. For example, the Mine Mill and Smelters Workers membership jumped from 176 members in 1940 to 21,000 in 1945, the United Automobile Workers membership went from 5,000 to 51,352 in the same period, and the United Steelworkers of America numbers jumped from 11,816 to 50,000 (McInnis 2002). This strength was particularly important in wartime industries. Indeed, between 1939 and 1941 the federal government issued a series of orders-in-council, but these were designed ‘to retard work stoppages, not to protect the democratic right to dissent’ (McInnis 2002:39). It wasn’t until the sustained labour unrest of 1942–3 in essential industries that the federal government responded with any significant rethinking of labour and industrial relations. Strikes in the steel, shipbuilding, and mining sectors ‘finally goaded the federal government authorities into action,’ McInnis writes. In particular, a 1943 strike in the basic steel industry ‘closed all operations outside Hamilton, Ontario, crippling war production.’ This action combined with militant strikes in the Alberta coalmines and the Montreal aircraft industry and ‘led to urgent discussions over the need for compulsory collectivebargaining legislation.’ Labour’s essential contributions to the war effort translated into increased leverage for concessions. In response to labour unrest, protracted hearings were held at the National War Labour Board in 1943, which are now understood to be a milestone in the development of Canadian labour legislation. These concessions, like the 1944 legislation of P.C. 1003, would have mixed results for labour militancy and working-class politics. P.C. 1003 was an emergency order-in-council passed by the Liberal government, which pro-
The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 47
tected workers’ right to organize, imposed collective bargaining and a grievance procedure, and required that employers recognize unions chosen by a majority of workers. It would ‘redirect class conflict from the picket lines to committee hearing rooms, stripping job actions of much of their overt political threat’ (McInnis 2002:40). The growing power of organized labour also reshaped electoral politics. It allowed the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), a party founded in Alberta in 1932 by socialist, labour, farm, and cooperative groups, to make enormous gains in popular support and to pose a serious threat to the ruling Liberals in many parts of the country. By late 1942 the CCF had the support of 27 per cent of Ontario voters and 23 per cent of all Canadians, and by 1943 it had eclipsed the Liberals in public opinion polls. The CCF was offering promises of ‘a “cradle to grave” welfare state and the continuation of high levels of state economic planning after the war,’ which put pressure on the governing Liberals to follow suit (Struthers 1998:183). The combined rise of CCF and union strength in the early 1940s led the politically left magazine Canadian Forum to write that the Marsh Report might be ‘the price that Liberalism is willing to pay to prevent socialism’ (quoted in Morton 1990:192). Military recruitment documents during the Second World War relied heavily on the promise of a better domestic life after victory in order to build support and boost enlistment. Images of abundance and bourgeois domesticity were put on display to instil in soldiers a tangible sense of the lives they were fighting for (Owram 1998:207), but also to keep the broader population supportive of the war effort. This became increasingly important as the war dragged on and morale started to wane. For example, in December 1943 the Royal Canadian Air Force introduced a recruitment campaign specifically geared to respond to the frustrations of the war-weary population. The campaign was based on images of post-war life, centred on the family and the home. As internal memos describe: ‘The general public, especially those with husbands, brothers and sweethearts in the services, are war weary. The excitement of relatives and friends enlisting going away for training and then overseas has now settled down to a long wait for them to come home. They are ready to contribute to anything which will hasten the re-uniting of their families. The “Speed of Victory” slogan of the 5th Victory Loan and the theme of most of the speakers, “One day sooner” had a terrific appeal to the public.’13 In the same document, the air force outlines the central premise of the new campaign with the slogan ‘To live to-morrow – Serve to-day.’
48 Military Workfare
It discusses how images of family life should figure centrally in recruitment materials, such that intimate longings stand in productive tension with national service. The campaign goal was ‘to make the predominate feature representative of those things people are waiting for in peace time, things pertaining to family life,’ and in this way, ‘to effect a desire for service by the straight patriotic appeal – to have served. To combine the above into our selling point, “To live to-morrow – Serve to-day.”’14 The air force proceeded to list the kinds of activities that should be used to depict post-war life – activities such as picnics, dancing, sports, home life, gardens, and weddings.15 Promises of secure and abundant post-war lives were extended across Allied nations to maintain morale. As a strategy, it was effectively put into writing in the Atlantic Charter, which Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill both signed in 1941. The Atlantic Charter explained the war as a fight for four basic freedoms, articulated by Roosevelt in a speech to the U.S. Congress earlier the same year. Freedom from want was central among these and was understood to entail social security and fair labour standards. Writing in the same year, the Canadian Welfare Council (1941:2) reiterated the importance of social rights, and in particular workers’ rights, to the morale of the population. ‘Public morale and citizen stability depend,’ the council suggests, ‘to no small degree, on continued observance, in war as in peace, of the slowly and painfully acquired safeguards of the workers of the state.’ State leaders also discussed extending social rights in order to manage morale. This was part of a growing recognition that the institution of social security was a necessary step for preserving a reformed but still capitalist society. Thus, the practical needs of heightened production to fuel national war created conditions for the rapid transformation of domestic social relations. In the context of a tight economy where ‘human resources’ were the fundamental feature of productive national strength, labour could exert newfound influence. Indeed, biopolitical government of population as a resource saw a ‘crisis’ of overpopulation during the Depression transformed into a ‘crisis’ of underpopulation with the outbreak of war a few years later (Morton 2003). The very life and size of the population became a problem of government in each moment. This ‘crisis’ created opportunities that some citizens and workers could exploit. This brief consideration of wartime political change reveals how the growing leverage of organized labour
The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 49
over war production could yield concessions from governing groups. Prime Minister King had witnessed the backlash that the Borden government experienced in the polls after the First World War and was committed not to follow suit (Morton 1998:167). King was also keenly aware that with war, a major shift had taken place in the population’s sense of entitlement to social security. ‘Charity has become a nauseating thing,’ King would argue in a 1944 parliamentary debate (quoted in Struthers 1998:179). ‘The new order is not going to have things done as charity,’ he continued, ‘what is to be done will be done as a matter of right.’ The Second World War was thus a catalyst for the development of new domains of public policy and new forms of welfare provision on a national scale. Organizing such a comprehensive mobilization of people and resources for the war served to expand the capacity for the national state to manage the large-scale coordination of policies and population. The scale of resources mobilized and managed for the war would ‘make it hard for future governments to gain belief for their refusal of industrial and social aid on the grounds of economic and financial impossibility’ (Low 1943:171). Bureaucrats, politicians, and institutions that experienced rapid expansion of their own authority were also reluctant to dismantle it themselves, and there was a direct connection between the development of skills for war and the ability to subsequently manage national welfare. Direct administrative experience for a nationwide social security program may have been lacking, but ‘the effort to mobilize manpower and material to wage a war built up the confidence and experience of senior federal civil servants’ (Guest 1987:209). Mobilization for the war also served to transfer the primary locus of government to the national scale, away from the regional and provincial authorities that had been central in the skeletal systems of residual welfare services prior to the First World War. The massive expansion of national government during the First World War was sustained in weak forms of federal intervention during the Depression but with a growing sense of responsibility for economy and society. The scale of mobilization during the Second World War cemented the role that the federal government would play in the post-war period. With the Depression in such recent memory, the thought of government guarantees of welfare had newfound appeal. In addition to directing the economy, managing rationed goods, and imposing income tax,
50 Military Workfare
the state had come to support disabled soldiers, their wives and children, and the widows and orphans of deceased veterans. In this way, ‘Canadians began to see positive roles that government could play beyond “night watchman”’ (Guest 1997:134). Post-War Welfare: ‘Generalizing’ Military Welfare? With a moniker like ‘post-war,’ few would argue that the welfare state had no relationship to the Second World War. Some scholars go so far as to cite the vast post-war expansion of unemployment insurance, mothers’ allowances, various family policies, pensions, the innovations in the national coordination and financing of housing and mortgage programs, and, in Canada, even the temporary introduction of nationally coordinated, publicly funded childcare, which served as a precedent for feminist activists in later years.16 Few, however, note that key elements of this form of welfare were already in existence in targeted form in the military. This becomes clear if we take a brief look at the Marsh Report, also known as Canada’s Beveridge Plan. At the height of war, William Beveridge produced an enormously influential plan that became the blueprint for the British welfare state. Beveridge was mentor and friend to Leonard Marsh, who drafted a parallel plan that came to define postwar welfare in Canada. When the Marsh Report was released in 1943 the social security ‘landscape’ in Canada was ‘relatively moon-like in its lack of prominent features’ (Guest 1987:208). The opening of Marsh’s document is worth quoting at some length: Why the post-war timing? The first, is that social security has become accepted as one of the things for which people of the world are fighting. It is one of the concrete expressions of ‘a better world’ which is particularly real to those who knew unemployment, destitution, inadequate medical care and the like in the depression periods before the war … A second one is completely realistic and timely. The end of the war means demobilization of much of the civilian as well as the uniformed population and, no matter how short may be the period of transition, there are risks and difficulties attached to the process of re-employment against which all appropriate facilities must be mobilized. It should not be forgotten, in this connection, that the reemployment problems of the post-war period include the reassembling of many thousands of families. A third and equally realistic consideration is that the transition period will show more marked contrast than any other,
The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 51 differences in respect of social provision for Canadian citizens when they are in the army or some other branch of the services, and when in ordinary civilian life. The provisions which the state extends to its armed forces and their dependents in the time of war, and to ex-service men’s families after war, go far along all the avenues of what is usually comprised in ‘social security’ – provision for children’s maintenance, widowhood, medical care, disability, unemployment, retraining and other contingencies. (Marsh 1943:12)
A summary document released alongside the Marsh Report further claims that ‘soldiers, sailors and airmen and their dependents really have a microcosm of social security already’ (Marsh 1943:2). Indeed, a number of specific policy proposals for post-war welfare came directly out of existing provisions for military personnel and their dependents. Most notably, the Marsh Report includes comparative tables of existing provision in the provinces. Provision for armed forces personnel is used as the national standard. For example, provincial mothers’ allowances compared poorly in amount to the allowances paid to wives and children of men in the armed forces, as Table 2.1, taken from the Marsh Report, reveals. Guest (1997:61) explains that allowances for servicemen’s dependents were calculated according to a cost of living study conducted by the Toronto Welfare Council, and provided a defensible standard of living. He also explains that soldiers’ dependents’ allowances were pegged at a level that would allow for a decent standard of living, to ‘save the soldier from financial anxiety and relieve him, if possible, from home worries so that he might be an efficient fighting man.’ Thus, Marsh identified military benefits as a microcosm of the system he was aiming to construct for Canadians, and he also used policies designed to manage military manpower as a starting point for his plans for broader reconstruction. A number of commentators in Canada described this crafting of plans for reconstruction as, in effect, the generalization of military welfare for civilians, and thus made observations that paralleled those of Titmuss. One welfare worker assessed the profound legacy of wartime family allowances for personnel. ‘Wartime military welfare assistance … foreshadowed a new era of “full-orbed public service,”’ Ernest Maury asserts. ‘There was a philosophy engendered in the war years that might easily be taken as a yardstick in dealing with our peacetime problems,’ which asserted that ‘assistance on the basis of need should be the right of all the citizens of our community.’17
52 Military Workfare Table 2.1 Comparison of Mothers’ Allowances with Armed Forces Allowances, 1943 Mothers’ Allowances for mother and one child (per month) Armed Forces Mothers’ Allowance for mother and one child (per month) 67.00
BC
Alta.
Sask.
Man.
Ont.
PQ
NS
$42.50 $47.50 $10.00 $33.00 $35.00 $25.00 $15.00 or b c d $45.00a
a: Depending on age of the children b: $35 paid in cities; $30 in towns; $25 in rural areas c: $25 in cities; $20 in towns; $15 in rural areas d: This is a minimum figure. An individual budget is calculated in each case but with a maximum of $80. Source: L.C. Marsh. 1943. Report on Social Security for Canada. Ottawa.
The emergence of a model of worker-citizen that included both the soldier and citizen allowed for the generalization of military welfare. This common model was one of a national worker-citizen, whose centrality persisted in the decades following the war. This model did not preclude programs targeted specifically at veterans – for example, in the areas of education and housing. However, the overall program for reconstruction was for ‘all’ Canadians. The ambiguity of this distinction is endemic to the paradox of the manoeuvre; soldiers were both particular and general. The post-war welfare state was constructed on principles of universality, but it was also, paradoxically, premised on the contributions of a particular group of people. As Christie (2000:265) writes, ‘In many respects the modern social security state, and especially family allowances, were perceived as a payment to men for their wartime suffering.’ Welfare became a right, but paradoxically it was a right that was earned. While the language of universality and entitlement permeated the practice of post-war social citizenship and had meaningful impact, policies were designed according to highly specific and normative notions of the citizen. Service for Services The connection between war work and welfare helped expedite a key shift from the voluntarism of early charity models to the sense of entitlement that would accompany social citizenship. Benefits were no
The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 53
longer based on absolute dire need or the generosity and benevolence of the rich; rather, service to the nation allowed citizens to feel entitlement to compensation. Mass warfare ingrained a sense of social right in the national population. This sense that social security would come out of national service was also foundational to the architects, and not just the citizens, of state welfare. The Marsh Report was not designed to address poverty and was certainly not a manifesto for building utopias of social justice. This was a much more sober plan geared towards already-employed men, with benefits contingent on contribution (Christie 2000:290). Britain’s Beveridge Plan was built around parallel assumptions. ‘Social security,’ Beveridge would explain, ‘must be achieved by cooperation between the State and the individual. The State should offer security for service and contribution’ (Beveridge 1942:9; emphasis mine). The question of contribution strikes at the core of a paradox at the heart of post-war social citizenship. Its status as a right – something that cannot be taken away but that is instead an inherent entitlement – coexists in conflict with its status as a form of payment, something that has to be earned. This inalienable right was conceptualized as an exchange or transaction, balancing the sacrifices of the citizenry during wartime with the post-war ‘payment’ of enhanced entitlements. This was characteristic of the construction of social citizenship under way in many nations. Writing in 1949 Britain, Hancock and Gowing observed that ‘there existed, so to speak, an implicit contract between government and people; the people refused none of the sacrifices that the government demanded from them for the winning of the war. In return they expected that the government should show imagination and seriousness in planning for the restoration and improvement of the nation’s well-being when the war had been won’ (cited in Rose 1999:77). David Harvey describes a kind of collective ‘bargaining’ at the scale of the socius that took place around post-war reconstruction plans across the advanced capitalist states. ‘International peace and prosperity,’ he writes, ‘had somehow to be built upon a programme that met the aspirations of peoples who had given massively of their lives and energies in a struggle generally depicted (and justified) as a struggle for a safer world, a better world, a better future … Postwar politics, if they were to remain democratic and capitalist, had to address questions of full employment, decent housing, social provision, welfare, and broad-based opportunity to construct a better future’ (Harvey
54 Military Workfare
1990:68). While post-war social citizenship was in many ways a reward for wartime work and sacrifice, the demand for service persisted after the war ceased. An expectation of service to the nation in exchange for social services remained an important organizing element of post-war entitlement. A ‘broadly conceived and unspecific notion of service to the State undergirded the immediate postwar concept of social citizenship,’ Christie (2000:91) argues. The emphasis on service in the construction of social citizenship was most striking in the priority accorded to the worker. The first definitive step in the assembly of the Canadian welfare state was the initiation of unemployment insurance in 1940. This intervention was hardly universal but rather was tailored to the needs of the normative publicsphere worker. Key policies that followed such as the family allowance of 1943 were also geared first and foremost towards the needs of labour force management. Struthers (1998:182) argues that the popularity of family allowances among the governments of Canada, Britain, France, and Australia was their utility as a social wage. ‘As a means of coming to the economic rescue of workers with large families, without touching off inflationary increases to basic wage rates,’ Struthers argues, ‘family allowances emerged as an attractive policy option for the state managers of Canada’s highly controlled wartime economy.’ Even those citizens who were not workers in the formal economy would be incorporated into the post-war order based on a contractual worker-citizen model. Social insurance could ‘incorporate into society those sectors of the population not directly and immediately in receipt of a wage – the young, the old, the sick and the unemployed,’ Rose (1999:64) argues. This was achieved by initiating economic relations ‘between each citizen and the state … in which both parties have their rights and their duties … Working or not, citizens became, in effect, employees of society.’ War – Worker – Citizen I have argued that labour was central to the wartime construction of social citizenship. Welfare was a tool for mediating class conflict with social policies deployed to secure the loyalty of the working class for national objectives. I’ve also signalled that welfare policies were heavily gendered in their wartime configurations largely as a result of concerns for reproductive labour. Class-centred accounts can be brought into productive tension with those that prioritize questions of
The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 55
race, gender, and other forms of social difference. Here it is useful to consider how implicit norms of the post-war welfare state were constructed around a socially and historically specific standard of the worker. Habermas (1990:54–5) argues that the wage labourer was the subject at the centre of state welfare. ‘In the welfare state project,’ he asserts, ‘emancipated living conditions worthy of human beings are no longer to emerge directly from the revolutionizing of labor conditions, that is, from the transformation of alienated labor into self-directed activity. Nevertheless, reformed conditions of employment retain a position of central importance in this project as well.’ For Habermas, efforts at reforming the conditions of work ‘remain the reference point … for compensatory measures designed to assume the burden of the fundamental risks of wage labor (accident, illness, loss of employment, lack of provision for old age).’ In exchange, he argues, ‘all those able to work must be incorporated into this streamlined and cushioned system of employment; hence the goal of full employment.’ Habermas proceeds to suggest that this model of compensation works ‘only if the full-time wage earner becomes the norm. For the burdens that continue to be connected with the cushioned status of dependent wage labor, the citizen is compensated in his role as client of the welfare state bureaucracies with legal claims, and in his role as consumer of mass produced goods, with buying power. The lever for the pacification of class antagonisms thus continues to be neutralization of the conflict potential inherent in the status of the wage laborer.’ The wage labourer was implicitly enshrined in plans for reconstruction as the assumed protagonist of post-war life. The wage labourer as iconic worker-citizen reveals the culturally specific economic subject that became politically entrenched as the iconic subject of state welfare, and provides a point of clear convergence between labour and citizenship studies. This worker-citizen was described in abstract and universal terms but was deeply informed by particularities that were simultaneously economic and cultural, gendered and racialized. ‘The success of American Fordism did not lie exclusively in a rising spiral of full employment or the redistributive capacities of the Keynesian welfare state,’ Ruddick (1993:295) argues. Rather, ‘its success lay as much in the ideological hegemony of the Fordist “Collective Subject,” the white middle class male.’ An expanded notion of class that accounts for the embodied and particular genealogies of social group relations can allow us to see class as always interlocking (Ruddick 1996) with other forms of social differentiation, and never an abstract or a neutral
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mathematical category (Bourdieu 1984; Smith 2000). Placing emphasis on the political categorization of economic subjects through use of the term ‘worker-citizen’ makes these so-called ‘cultural’ specificities of class explicit. Post-war policies made demands for particular kinds of ‘contributions’ through the economic performance of work and the cultural performance of gendered, classed, and racialized national identities. The long list of peoples that were explicitly excluded from this regime is evidence of this partial universality. The social citizen was described as a universal figure, but in actual practice, citizens had to act, think, work, love, and look in very particular ways and places. The subject of ‘universal’ citizenship had qualities that could never be extended to the entire population. Difference from these norms could entail a denial of citizenship altogether, as with Native peoples, who were administered as wards of the state and not even recognized as ‘persons’ for years after the Second World War. Other forms of difference could land you in state custody, as with homosexuals, who were alternately considered criminally deviant or mentally insane for three decades after the war (Cavell 2004). Women were included in post-war social citizenship but in highly specific ways that prescribed domestic and reproductive duties and limited their rights in the formal labour market. Women were, in the words of Camilla Griggers, ‘substitute bodies’ (1997:50:1). The extent to which this regime of worker-citizenship was particular in terms of the actual identity of the worker-citizen has been identified by a range of literatures but is particularly well developed by feminist analysis of the ‘breadwinner welfare state.’18 The situation of women in post-war work and employment policy makes the simultaneity of economic and social goals of the welfare state starkly evident. During the war, women served in a range of capacities: in uniform, in munitions plants, as drivers, health-care workers, and of course as mothers and wives. Most striking during this time was the rise in women’s employment in ‘non-standard’ sectors. In 1939 only 6,000 women were employed in industrial occupations, but this number jumped to 261,000 by autumn of 1943 (McInnis 2002:24). With the end of the war came widespread fear of returned joblessness and economic collapse, particularly among the expanded government authorities. Women became a convenient pressure valve to manage volatility in the labour force. While many women raised their voices in support of retaining their right to formal employment and the economic independence that accompanied it,19 state policy
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was designed to get women back to the home and out of the labour market (see Vosko 2000:89). Family allowances are a good example. In addition to managing the formal labour market, family allowances were also designed to lure women back home to make babies. Women figured directly in parliamentary debates about family allowances, but only in the context of being encouraged to return to the home and the job of mothering and free up virtually all other jobs for returning soldiers (Struthers 1998:187). This post-war push of women back into the home, and the edifice of welfare policy and programs constructed around that return, is precisely what feminist scholars have described in discussions about the breadwinner welfare state. This literature demonstrates that gendered assumptions about the public and private spheres were central to post-war reconstruction. At the core of postwar citizenship lay radical assumptions about gender, sexuality, family, and economy. The notion that women belonged in the private spaces of the private sphere with their ‘natural’ orientations towards social and biological reproduction, while men should gear themselves to earning a living and supporting a family, was heavily reinforced through public policy. With the breadwinner welfare state, the needs and qualities of the masculine subject were generalized to universal status in the public sphere. The gendered basis to the breadwinner welfare state was not simply descriptive but performative and disciplinary. The lives of many worker-citizens did not conform to these roles; nevertheless, policies distributed material resources on this basis. So, for example, women who worked outside the home were often ineligible for the benefits and protections of labour law and collective agreements. However, this was not only a heavily gendered regime, but also a highly classed and racialized one. Nandita Sharma (2006:64) has recently argued that ‘legally differentiating and ranking people through hierarchical categories of nation, race, and gender’ led to the ‘development of Canada’s famed “high wage proletariat.”’ Sharma further points out that the social specificity and political geography of the subset ‘White, male workers in Canada’ that could ‘hope to be included in its ranks was clouded by scholars (and critics) of capitalism who took too literally the notion that free wage workers alone constituted the capitalist labour force.’ Working-class women and women of colour maintained high levels of formal employment even while the ideal of bourgeois domesticity was elevated to normative status in the public sphere (bell hooks 1990:42–3). Working-class women who could not afford to be a
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part of the post-war model of male-breadwinner citizenship worked, but they nevertheless did so without the benefits, protections, and wages extended to white male workers. The notion of service to the nation that underpinned post-war social citizenship was thus simultaneously economic and cultural. Entitlement was premised on service, and service was then conceptualized in highly specific ways that varied with the type of citizen in question. In this chapter I have aimed to make connections between welfare, war, and the construction of national social citizenship explicit. While countless scholars have implicitly addressed core aspects of this dynamic and several have explored it directly, the insights that this sort of engagement should produce for our understanding of the past and future of these institutions have largely been overlooked. It is common sense to refer to the welfare state as a post-war institution, much like we casually refer to post-war suburbs or post-war prosperity. But unlike these latter concepts where the connections to war have been thoroughly interrogated, the specific contributions of war to the welfare regime that followed are largely overlooked. Yet, I have argued that entitlement was firmly linked to ‘service’ where service was inseparable from its wartime configuration. War work was the sacrifice and service that was rewarded with welfare. I have also argued that welfare existed in targeted form for soldiers during the war, and that social policy has a long history in the military. The explanation is practical, although perhaps not obvious; soldiers labour under particular and extreme conditions. The work of soldiering prevents a lot of ‘normal’ things from taking place such as dayto-day contact with family and community, training and skills development that can be transferred to other work contexts, and regular career advancement; even the continued regular functioning of the body is often interrupted by military service. Soldiers have also been historically entitled to special rights because they provide essential service to the nation – the same ‘body’ that makes so much social policy. Mass war required mass temporary service, and the sacrifice of service was rewarded with welfare. Thus, during the Second World War a figure of worker-citizen, which encompassed both groups, was assembled. Social policies, which had historically been an entitlement for soldiers who had done the work of defending the nation, were extended to the population at large as part of a massive plan for reconstruction. It is perhaps not surprising, given that it was the soldier who figured so prominently in the post-war welfare state’s design, that post-war citizenship was constructed around a highly specific image of the worker.
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In emphasizing these connections between war and welfare I do not mean to suggest that all welfare is payment for war service or management of war workers, or even that practices and policies that were engineered in that context retain an ‘essentially’ military character. In fact, as I will argue in the following chapters, state welfare would actually help to generate a recruitment crisis for the military and would play a role in the emergence of forms of citizenship that were explicitly anti-militarist. War was a critical juncture that catapulted the population into intimate and national forms of security and identity.
3 Post-War Citizenship: Mass and Militarized
In considering … the results of deliberate attempts to organize a society for war – either in the military, economic or social spheres – we are confronted with one of the major characteristics of large-scale, modern war; the fact that modern war casts its shadow long before it happens and that its social effects are felt for longer and longer periods after armed conflicts have ceased. (Titmuss 1958:77–8) Some of the shift in population, much of the drastic change in occupational pursuits, the significance of the social system of regular defence training for all the population – these are factors which Canada may well regard as long-enduring in her life, and adjust her service to meet them, as such, not as war manifestations, to be met on a temporary basis. (Canadian Welfare Council 1941:4) The roots of present day concern, it is suggested, are better sought after among the less tangible, more elusive after-effects of the war, such as psychological and sociological upheavals, and collectivism in the political and economic fields. In short, it is the nature of the national experience itself that is the lasting fruit, or poison, of 1945. (Canadian Committee for the History of the Second World War 1981:1)
A new Canada was configured during the Second World War. National political economy and human geography were dramatically reorganized, while profound and lasting change took shape in government and the political identities of citizens. The war transformed the practices, subjectivities, and orientations of citizens and produced people that would relate to themselves and each other differently. I have
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argued that the iconic post-war citizen and the welfare state he and his family would inhabit were fashioned around the norms of the worker-citizen. This worker-citizen was furthermore modelled on the productive and reproductive particularities of the labouring soldier and his ‘dependents.’ During and after the Second World War, the bounds of nationally sanctioned normativity were defined in the image of the war worker. The Second World War involved the mobilization of the vast majority of Canadians, and it acted upon them. The war cultivated feelings of national identity among people who were technically British subjects until 1947. The declaration of war was, in fact, Canada’s first ‘autonomous’ act of foreign policy. The war helped to transform a collection of peoples into a nationalized people, even as, or perhaps because, the boundaries of national identity at wartime were firmly and sometimes violently drawn. It is not surprising, therefore, that the war was also a time of heightened racism and social discipline. The internment of 22,000 Japanese Canadians as ‘enemy aliens’ in British Columbia during the war is an example rather than exception of the relational exclusions through which national identities are defined.1 Canada is not typically understood today as a military nation, but at the end of the Second World War the armed forces were among the largest in the world. At that time, Canada could also claim the significant achievement of having recruited the largest ever known all-volunteer military.2 With nearly a million enlisted, and the rest of the labour force managed by central government through the National Selective Service,3 the war was definitely a mass experience. Not every Canadian was a veteran of the war itself, but it would have been hard to find a Canadian that wasn’t in some way touched, as veteran or victim, by the war effort. Mass war meant that munitions workers, soldiers, and nursing sisters were all part of the same project. All citizens, not just soldiers, were sacrificing liberty, if not life, for the nation. Mass war made citizens more nationally and collectively oriented, and the heightened nationalism of wartime persisted in a militarized post-war culture. This nationalism had definite impacts on social identity and social geography, and facilitated the construction of a distinctly Canadian form of social citizenship. In this chapter I trace the lasting effects of war on the peace that followed and consider how war changed people, politics, and places. I outline the contours of the common model of citizenship that governed both civilians and military personnel during the Second World War and afterwards – the national worker-citizen. The chapter begins
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with a discussion of the geopolitical context of the early Cold War, focusing on the establishment of a professional standing military force and the dramatic expansion of armed forces personnel. However, the focus of this chapter is on domestic practices and the intimate interplay of military and civilian worlds. I explore the deeply ingrained nature of the military and militarism in Canada from the late 1940s into the early 1960s through an examination of unconventional citizenship practices. I examine sports and recreation as part of the expansion of public welfare and as a military strategy to encourage a physically fit national population; military practices around questions of ‘race,’ ethnicity, language, and gender difference, which are continuous with civilian norms of citizenship at the time; and the military presence in schools and the lives of youth more broadly. The chapter then shifts focus slightly to consider military recruitment campaigns, which saturated the public sphere but relied on intimate and highly gendered ‘private’ identities – for example, recruiting men through emotional appeals to their mothers and girlfriends. The final section of this chapter returns to the connections between military work and social welfare and examines how the extension of benefits in exchange for service allowed for a conflation of personal and national security. The exchange of social services for national service through work was a logic that emerged in the military but which subsequently migrated into civilian politics. I argue that the rapid construction of a post-war welfare state relied on this borrowed logic of national workfare just as the iconic post-war worker-citizen borrowed from the masculine war worker. The elevation of wartime figures and forms of government to ‘universal’ status in civilian life entrenched rigidly gendered and thoroughly militarized models of citizenship in post-war life. Paradoxically, the generalization of wartime models provoked a crisis of military recruitment by the late 1960s. The subject of social welfare, the ‘universal,’ rights-bearing, educated, and entitled citizen, increasingly rejected the discipline and hierarchy of military life. The shift from military workfare to social welfare ironically created rifts between citizenship and soldiering that remain a powerful force in politics today. Militarizing National Citizenship The Canadian Welfare Council (CWC), a progressive social policy organization founded in 1920, which became the Canadian Council on Social Development in 1971, lobbied for an expansive post-war
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reconstruction plan. Along with other progressive, reform-oriented lobby groups such as the Canadian Women’s Press Club, the CWC played an important role in the design and dispersal of the new models of citizenship that emerged during the war. The CWC tried to mobilize the burgeoning sense of national unity that had come with war in its campaigns to build a strong citizenship with commitments to social equity. It described how 1940 would prove to be ‘one of the most significant years in Canadian history’ because war mobilization provided ‘a new unity, a vital confidence in our cause’ (1941:22). At the same time, the CWC identified ways in which militarism would infuse postwar life, signalling in particular the growing importance of planning. ‘The new peace will not be left to hazard, as was the old peace; there will be reserve strength to enforce its equity and justice,’ it wrote. The CWC (1941:4) envisioned a defensive style of peace premised on preparedness for war. ‘Probably not for our generation,’ it continues, ‘will this continent see again nominal defence forces: know freedom from compulsory defence training: cessation from construction of ships of sea and air, training of men to man them.’ Indeed, military tendrils ran deep throughout post-war culture. The three services became core national institutions with a presence in schools, the media, and the symbolic and material spaces of the national public sphere. The returning serviceman was the reference point for a wide array of political and economic projects such as the coordination of labour markets and planning policies; but he was also the central figure in the marketing of consumer goods and in the modelling of the family. The returning soldier was the primary protagonist in the bourgeois and familial fairy tale of domestic consumption and security. Popular culture indulged in a celebration of the abundance of the new products and new lives available to families, but this emphasis on choice carried with it an expectation of responsibility in choice. The state would provide the conditions for abundance and security, but citizens would have to plan responsibly for themselves and their households. The war was over, but the habit of large-scale and long-range planning of society and economy lingered. Planning had become associated with personal, national, and social security and was celebrated as something to which all citizens, and not just government, should actively commit. Both planning and consumption were core features of the post-war cultural economy and came together powerfully in the family home. Post-war suburbs were rolled out around Canadian cities, on the consumption side fuelled by growth in consumer spending
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and government policies that extended low-interest loans and provided land grants to returning veterans. The new suburban home was a geographical solution to the cultural, political, and economic agendas of the time. Advertisements in the Canadian Home Journal from 1945 are indicative of the role of the home in the concurrent projects of consumption, planning, and familialism. One (Plate 3.1) depicts a husband and wife drawing up housing plans with the caption, ‘Are You a Postwar Planner?’ Another (Plate 3.2) from the same publication and year asks readers, ‘Why not plan your own home?’ Post-war reconstruction was organized around a common image of the breadwinner that governed both soldiers and civilians but also prioritized the civil role of returning military personnel. Pan-Canadian social welfare programs were implemented over the two decades following for Canadian citizens broadly, but there were also a series of special policies geared to veterans. These policies were aimed at integrating the large group of dislocated men into domestic norms of family and home and work life. Concern for the future of domesticity and the family was a defining feature of the official response to the return of soldiers. ‘Our whole social order,’ Captain S.A. Sutton, a military official of the wartime Dependents’ Allowance Board, argued, ‘depends on the willingness of men in the Armed Forces to eventually return to their homes and resume their responsibilities as husbands and parents.’4 A heightened concern for the family life of veterans was also a feature of popular culture. The image shown in Plate 3.3 is drawn from a 1945 Canadian Home Journal story, ‘Pin-Up Father.’ The story describes the difficult return home of a Second World War serviceman and focuses on his troubled relationship with his young son. The boy initially rejects his father along with his invitations to picnics and sports outings. The story suggests that the problem of putting families back together again after war was not just a matter of convincing men to return home, but also of convincing women and children to welcome them back. Its placement in a ‘women’s magazine’ further suggests that convincing men to return home was conceived as a public problem, but convincing family members to embrace them was understood to be a private matter. The struggle between father and son in ‘Pin-Up Father ’ is both narrated and resolved by the mother/wife’s efforts. The family is put back together again, and as a result the national social order is perhaps made more secure.
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Plate 3.1 ‘Are You a Postwar Planner?’ Source: Canadian Home Journal (September 1945):69.
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Plate 3.2 ‘Plan Your Own Home’ Source: Canadian Home Journal (July 1945):31.
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Plate 3.3 ‘Pin-Up Father’ Source: Canadian Home Journal (July 1945):5.
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Plate 3.4 Post-War Woman Source: Canadian Home Journal (July 1945): Cover image.
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The returning soldier was both ‘universal’ and ‘particular’ without contradiction. The universalism of post-war citizenship was in fact contingent on the particularities of the wartime workers that defined its contours. Reconstruction was geared to avoiding serious disruption to Canada’s post-war economy. Guiding the economy away from recession and keeping employment levels high were the priorities shaping legislation. The social machine of wartime government with its centralized planning and control of the population and economy was also mobilized to manage the transition from war to post-war conditions. A spate of measures was implemented to stabilize and fuel the post-war economy. Returning personnel were offered incentives to establish themselves in fishing and farming. A 1942 order-in-council of the civil service gave preference to veterans in employment. Veterans were also armed with War Service Gratuities that distributed $752 million in purchasing power (Mackenzie 1943:6). The 1942 Vocational Training Co-ordination Act sent 130,000 veterans to colleges and technical institutions, while other education benefits for vets sent 150,000 to university. The Veteran’s Land Act of the same year helped them buy homes and furniture and contributed to building the landscape of post-war suburbs. All this planning meant that, unlike in the aftermath of the First World War, a post-war depression never had a chance to start. Men were sent to work or to school, and women were sent home. In this way, everyone was assigned a ‘choice’ of place. There was even a plan for those who didn’t find a stable productive role for themselves after war. Unemployment insurance, initiated in 1940, had a quarter billion dollar reserve by 1945. In this way, a strong central government continued to practise the complex and large-scale planning of ‘who does what and where’ that was so well practised during war. Canadian Nationalism and the American ‘Invasion’ Canada’s changing relationship with the United States was another key defence-related factor shaping post-war politics. A new form of economic and military integration between the two countries was engineered during the war. In 1940, after years of flirting with a strengthened alliance, the Canadian government officially oriented its defensive capacities towards supporting the United States over Britain. As one scholar put it, at the Ogdensburg meeting in 1940 Canada literally ‘switched empires’ (Morton 2003:67). At this meeting, U.S. President Roosevelt and Canadian Prime Minister King agreed to work
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together on common military problems and convened a Permanent Joint Board on Defence with military representatives from both countries. The following year the two men signed the Hyde Park Declaration, which coordinated some core elements of the countries’ productive capacities in order to expedite wartime defence production. Canada agreed to supply the United States with specific munitions and materials, and in exchange would purchase American arms and equipment. By 1947 following the Permanent Joint Board’s 35th recommendation, Canada and the United States committed to ‘adoption, as far as practicable, of common designs and standards in arms, equipment, organization, methods of training …’ (quoted in Morton 1990:97–8). While American branch plants had long fuelled key sectors of the Canadian economy, these defence agreements nevertheless had major impact. Once continental defence was in motion, Whitaker (2004:44) argues, ‘close linkages were established at a sub-political level between the two military establishments.’ These ‘sub-political’ linkages between bureaucrats, planners, and private sector professionals, alongside the ‘increasing standardization of equipment and integration of training and operations,’ meant that ‘Canada, as the junior partner in continental defence, not surprisingly found little independent voice within the military councils at the Pentagon and White House.’ Canada’s growing incorporation into the American Empire and away from the British one was conflicted and deeply ambivalent. On the one hand, this alliance was part of a movement towards independence beyond the bounds of British Dominion. On the other hand, incorporation into the American Empire presented a serious threat to a burgeoning sense of national identity and state sovereignty. After a few years of bilateral alliance with the United States, a sense of fear that this relationship was threatening Canadian sovereignty made the government eager to enter into broader multinational agreements. Anxiety over the fate of Canada in an American-centred orbit was a central reason for palpable excitement among politicians and civil servants about joining the United Nations. It also helped to coin the haunting slogan that circulated among civil servants in the capital in 1948: ‘twelve in the bed means no rape’ (Morton 1990:232). In other words, more nations in the organization meant one was less likely to ‘dominate’ another so brazenly. This conflicted alliance with the United States served to define the defensive nationalism that characterized Canadian cultural politics in the post-war and early Cold War period. In addition to directly informing
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international relations and defence policy, anxiety about the deepening relationship with the United States propelled the national government into cultural production. It was the perceived threat of American cultural ‘invasion’ that spurred the creation of federal cultural institutions. It is also what led the government to assign federal cultural institutions a primary role in national defence. Whitaker and Marcuse (1994:228) explain that at this time ‘there was an external threat, but it was not that of Communism, which had so transfixed the Americans.’ While communists were certainly persecuted in Canada, ‘the Americans themselves, and their enormously fertile and expansive cultural industries,’ were a dominant threat in the imaginary of Canadian officials. Whitaker and Marcuse may well underplay the nature of the communist ‘threat’ in Cold War Canada; however, their analysis is instructive in its foregrounding of the American one. Threat from the south was the central ethos of the Massey Commission, which reported in 1951 on the federal government’s role in arts and science. The commission report explained that the ‘American Invasion by film, radio and periodical is formidable’ (quoted in Whitaker and Marcuse 1994:228). Culture is conceptualized as a form of property that springs forth from the very territory of the nation. The threat to national cultural identity by this ‘invasion’ from the south thus threatened Canada’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Massey Commission explicitly assigned to national culture a prominent role in national defence. After noting that defence had again become the largest federal budget item, the report queried, ‘Are not tanks needed more than Titian, bombs more important than Bach? If we are a nation concerned with the problem of defence, what we may ask ourselves are we defending? We are defending civilization, our share of it, our contribution to it. The things with which our inquiry deals are the elements which give civilization its character and its meaning … Our military defences must be made secure; but our cultural defences equally demand national attention; the two cannot be separated’ (Royal Commission 1951:274–5). The Massey Report ‘recommended that culture in Canada should be a bullwark of national security’ (Cavell 2004:5–6). National culture was militarized in order to protect the nation from American invasion. Yet, ironically, at the same time the Canadian military was rebuilt to support American imperial wars. The Cold War military build-up started only a few short years after the Second World War demobilization. With it, the size of the armed
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forces swelled, as did its public presence. In response to a direct request from the U.S. president in 1951 for help in Korea, Canada rearmed at a shocking speed and scale. The government expanded the military’s capacity to include 40 air force squadrons, 100 navy ships, and a 10,000-soldier infantry division. The total cost of this rearmament over three years exceeded $5 billion. The defence budget multiplied by five times between 1950 and 1953, while during the same time the armed forces expanded from 47,000 members to 104,000. The deployment of troops for Cold War defence was itself a struggle between competing loyalties to different empires. Some figures in government and the military were committed to backing the United States, while others remained staunchly supportive of Britain. A compromise saw the air force sent to serve with the Americans, while the army served with the British in Europe (Morton 1990). In addition to a largescale build-up of humans and hardware for war, the government of Louis St Laurent armed itself politically with new legislation that radically expanded the sweep of federal powers at home. With the Emergency Powers Act, C.D. Howe, known as the ‘Minister of everything,’ regained much of his wartime power over the economy. With authority over defence production, Howe had the power ‘to control and regulate the production, processing, distribution and acquisition, disposition or use of materials or the supply and use of services deemed essential for war purposes’ (Morton 1990:237). A perhaps contradictory but nevertheless defensive nationalism thus flourished in the early Cold War years and placed the military and militarism at the centre of political and social life. In post-war and early Cold War Canada, the military became enmeshed in the everyday lives of citizens and a powerful symbol of national identity. It contributed to the production and regulation of gender norms, and was the model for many forms of social discipline that extended far beyond the bounds of the base and into the workplace, the sports field, and the classroom. The military funded and coordinated cultural events, produced television and radio sports programs, and published wilderness survival manuals for sportsmen. Its ads appeared in newspapers and mass transit from coast to coast, and the presence of recruiters was expected at fairs, parades, and sporting matches. The military presence in the lives of young Canadians was particularly powerful, and was geared to long-term war preparedness and recruiting efforts.
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Future Soldiers and Citizens There has been an enormous increase in the various ‘Youth Movements.’ Many of these are frankly militaristic, a definite preparation of the adolescent to take up his place in the fighting forces, and there has been much controversy as to the future of these movements after the war. (Low 1943:168)
In the post-war period, the military coordinated mandatory in-school cadet training, sponsored sports and physical education programs, and invested in militarized youth groups such as the Boy Scouts. The military origins of scouting movements are well documented. The scouting tradition was first developed by British military officials in response to the poor performance, health, and skills of their personnel in the early days of the Boer War. Scouting was a way to get large numbers of boys familiar with military forms of discipline, physical education and training, wilderness survival, and basic health and first-aid skills. The details of uniform, badges, drills, physical training, and hierarchical organization were all inspired directly by military practice. Scouting was also seen as a means of preserving British masculinity. As Baden-Powell, the founder of the modern scouting movement, would write in his 1908 book Scouting for Boys, ‘Every boy ought to learn how to shoot and obey orders, else he is no more good when war breaks out than an old woman.’ Through masculine, militarized instruction and a disciplined way of life, the movement’s leaders saw scouting as a means of developing good citizenship. ‘The aim of the movement,’ Baden-Powell wrote, ‘was to make good citizens, and for this reason it was judged unnecessary to introduce military drill.’5 The Boy Scouts quickly spread through North America and established themselves as an important form of merit-based masculine socialization. Scouting movements after the Second World War also continued to rely on the military, not only as a model of discipline and sociality but for direct institutional support. In Canada, scout troop leaders were often drawn from the military, and scouting groups became the feeder organizations for armed forces cadets. Not all scouts joined the military, but it became rare to find a soldier that hadn’t once been a scout. The military also relied heavily on the activities of the Boy Scouts in military family communities to keep the children of personnel – the ‘military brats’ – out of trouble and en route to military careers themselves.6 In fact, in 1959 National Defence Headquarters devoted a series of meetings
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Plate 3.5 Scouting for Boys Source: Cover page, Scouting for Boys, 1908, Baden-Powell.
to the shortage of Boy Scout leaders. It considered ‘conducting special training courses for Cub and Scout leaders on a regional basis to meet the needs of Armed Forces’ and launched an inquiry into the status of Scout programs, noting that a ‘full understanding of the training need is required before further action can be taken.’7 It embarked on a thorough review of each ‘Married Quarter Area’ to find out: (a) the number of active Cub packs and Scout troops in the MQ community; (b) the number of additional Cub packs and Scout troops required to meet the need; (c) the number of qualified Cub and Scout masters now active in the MQ community; (d) the number of interested Cub and Scout leaders, who are not qualified but would be interested in becoming qualified through a special training course.8
Scouts were but one means of keeping the military in the minds of potential soldiers. The Canadian Forces involved itself in the everyday lives of children and youth in a variety of ways. One example of its creative involvement in young people’s lives was the design and distribution of school book covers for students. While on recruiting tours to schools across the country, officers would deliver specially produced sleeves that could be wrapped around textbooks. The school book
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covers protected books from wear and tear but also provided a surface on which to advertise the military to Canadian high school students. School book covers were an important initiative for recruiting and public relations from the late 1950s through to the early 1960s. The sheer scale of efforts invested in their planning and design, and the sustained discussions between recruiters about their impact, fill many hundreds of pages of memos and planning documents in the national archives. Reports from recruiting units across the country to air force headquarters in Ottawa in 1960 outlined the success of the school book covers in local communities. The recruiting unit from Windsor wrote that ‘the school book covers are an excellent media of advertising’ and a ‘way of keeping the RCAF in front of students during their complete term.’ The Montreal unit explained that ‘the continuous exposure provided cannot but be a powerful and economical agent in selling the product.’ It also stressed that providing the schools with such a useful product contributed to ‘building and/or maintaining favourable relations with the service.’ The Calgary and North Bay units concurred. The latter reported that the covers ‘make school authorities more amenable and cooperative to the officer’s request for a period later in the school term.’ The Calgary unit also emphasized their subtle power: ‘Undoubtedly, students using the book covers will give some degree of thought to the RCAF and this may ultimately bring them to the [recruiting unit].’ The St John’s unit explained that the school book covers extend their geographic reach. They ‘serve as a very satisfactory investment of public relations between the RCAF and high schools, particularly in those one and two room schools in remote communities in this province where liaison visits are not made.’ The Quebec unit insisted the book covers were a precious asset in the field of School Liaison for the following reasons: (a) School principals are deeply interested in providing their students with a sense of discipline, cleanliness, tidiness and even standardization: the RCAF book covers help them attain this goal to a certain extent; (b) These book covers usually become a reminder of our visiting officer’s forthcoming or past lecture; when the student uses his books he is more prone to looking forward to the RCAF as a possible career; (c) Since the RCAF is well liked and appreciated, the school principals feel that these book covers act as an ideal ‘booster’ for their students. It is not unusual to hear them say: ‘These will help them think high’;
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Plate 3.6 School Book Cover: Plane in Orbit Source: Photo of plane shown flying in orbit © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, E-1C, accession 1983-84/49, vol. 10, file 304-20-4.
(d) These book covers are obviously more appreciated by the principals than the Coke or Pepsi covers; (e) Many schools do not wait for the issues, they come up with a definite request.9
The school book covers were an important element of the military’s efforts to maintain a presence in the lives of Canadian youth. Young people would handle the book covers on a daily basis, thus incorporating military imagery and messages into their personal space and regular routines. This intimate presence in the lives of young people went far beyond adorning the surface of educational materials, however, and extended deep into its content. In the decades after the war public school curriculum was militarized. For instance, in 1961 the air force produced posters and individual folders of the poem ‘High Flight’ for distribution
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Plate 3.7 School Book Cover: ‘Horizons Unlimited’ Source: Advertisement ‘Horizons Unlimited’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, E-1C, accession 1983-84/49, vol. 11, file 304-20-4.
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Plate 3.8 School Book Cover: Flight Base Source: Advertisement/illustration for RCAF of a flight base © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, E-1C, accession 1983-84/49, vol. 10, file 304-20-4.
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Plate 3.9 School Book Cover: ‘Your Education Comes First’ Source: Advertisement RCAF with ‘Consider’ notes © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, E-1C, accession 1983-84/49, file 304-20-4, part 12.
in Ontario schools. Every student writing the Ontario Departmental English Literature Examination was ‘required to make an intensive study of this poem.’10 The poem, written by air force Pilot John G. Magee, blends national militarism and a religious awe of nature through a narrative about flight. For the thousands of children required to recite Magee’s words, air force flight was not only a means to slip ‘the surly bonds of earth’ and fly ‘where never lark, nor even eagle flew’ but also, most importantly, a means of touching ‘the face of God.’ There was some confusion among military officials about the role of the poem in the schools. In memos they pondered whether the poem was primarily meant as educational material or recruitment and public relations propaganda. The first design for the printing of the poem included a large headline, ‘There’s a Great Future in Aviation for Young Canadians’ (Plate 3.10). However, there was concern that this was potentially inappropriate. Indeed, in the final design for the poem, this direct recruiting appeal was removed and replaced with a more subtle military presence – an image of the author/officer in full flight gear with a biography detailing his military service
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Plate 3.10 High Flight 1 Source: Advertisement ‘There’s a Great Future in Aviation for Young Canadians’ – High Flight © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/ National Defence fonds/RG24, box 285, vol. 11, file 304-20-4.
(Plate 3.11). In some ways, despite dropping the direct recruiting appeal, the final design is even more militarized than the first version, with its dominating RCAF Queen’s Crown badge positioned above the text, its highly conspicuous fighter plane in the central background of the page, and its RCAF target-like ensign in place of the first letter in ‘Oh!’ In this way, the design reveals some of the ironies of the RCAF officers’ deliberations. In order to avoid an inappropriate recruiting pitch in mandatory academic curriculum, the poem is presented in more intensely militarized form.
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Plate 3.11 High Flight 2 Source: Advertisement ‘High Flight’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, vol. 11, box 285, file 304-20-4.
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In fact, there was no need to distinguish absolutely between the military’s recruitment practices and their influence on education and citizenship. In the air force’s estimation, ‘High Flight’ would ‘be an inspirational factor on the Bulletin Board of senior classrooms, but also would promote excellent public relations between the students and staff of most Ontario High Schools and the RCAF.’11 The military was both a core national institution and a central element of citizenship training for youth through education, and thus ‘High Flight’ would simultaneously shape young people’s minds and help bring their bodies to RCAF recruiters. Another program, the Royal Canadian Air Force’s ‘Kids’ Day,’ is an example of the military’s targeting of younger children. Initiated first in the United States in 1953 by a ‘Hollywood radio commentator’ as a way to fight juvenile delinquency, responsibility for Kids’ Day was eventually assumed by the Kiwanis Club in partnership with the United States Air Force (USAF).12 Following ‘consultation with senior officers of the United States Air Force,’ Canadian military archives report, ‘it was decided that the annual event could serve to initiate youngsters in the meaning of “air age living.”’ Kids’ Day became an annual event for children on air force bases across the United States. In 1957 the Kiwanis Club, in partnership with the RCAF, initiated Kids’ Day in Canada. RCAF memos report that the U.S. Department of Defense found ‘the results of USAF cooperation in Kids’ Day as “gratifying,”’ and point out that the project ‘is considered highly worthwhile by base commanders and USAF authorities concerned with community relations, long-range recruiting, and education of the public.’ A 1957 bulletin to Kiwanis Club presidents announced the participation of the RCAF in Kids’ Day in Canada. The bulletin, which came from the Kiwanis committees on ‘Boys and Girls Work’ and the ‘Underprivileged Child,’ outlines a more extensive list of benefits derived from the partnership. Kids’ Day will: • Enable clubs to raise the horizons of youth and help them by such programs to visualize the possibilities of the Air Age. • Enable clubs to honor the ‘citizens of tomorrow’ by entertaining them and focusing public attention on their achievements and potentialities in a most dramatic way. • Enable clubs to acquaint children and young people with the facilities and achievements of the RCAF Stations. • Promote better understanding and relationships between the RCAF Stations and the local community.13
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While the long-range public relations and recruiting opportunities were immense, the RCAF made a clear commitment that ‘at no time during the Open House is there to be any attempt at recruiting.’14 The event became wildly successful in both countries by the late 1950s. The Kiwanis president reported that the impact of Kids’ Day in 1958 had ‘reached an all time high. A total of more than two million youngsters were entertained, honored, or similarly acknowledged in our two countries. The purpose of the observance, as you will remember, is to honor the youngsters of today as the citizens of tomorrow, and to make September 26th, in civilian communities and on air force bases and RCAF stations, truly the youngsters’ own special day.’15 Military archives hold stacks of documents on the planning, publicity, and organization of Kids’ Day events, as well as detailed reports from participating bases about activities and attendance figures. Attendance at bases ranged from a few hundred to several thousand children, who played games, learned about aircraft and other equipment, watched films, and ate snacks. Local media often attended and reported on the day’s events, ensuring that the air force remained deeply embedded in the communities and futures of young Canadians. War Games: Sport and Militarism in Post-War Canada Nations have passed away and left no traces, And History gives the naked cause of it – One single, simple reason in all cases; They fell because their people were not fit. – Rudyard Kipling
This extract from Kipling’s preface to Land and Sea Tales appeared as the opening text of the British War Office’s 1943 book Pre-service Physical Training and Recreation for Army Cadets.16 The publication was reprinted in Canada in 1945 and found its way into the files of the Ministry of Indian Affairs, where it became a resource for training Aboriginal youth in the arts of physical education and fostering their incorporation into Canadian society through cadets programs. There is little subtlety in the poem; the survival of the nation rests on a physically fit population. The poem’s appearance in the cadet training guide suggests that sport and fitness were particularly important elements of the military’s role in the lives of youth. Like the Boy Scouts movements, military initiatives for physical education were geared towards
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the broader project of moulding a fit and trained population for future wars. The War Office booklet asserts that ‘the speed and intensity of modern warfare makes tremendous calls on the discipline and stamina of men’ and suggests that ‘only those who have been systematically and progressively trained and developed can stand up to the strain and hardships of modern war.’ Military masculinity, even in an era of mechanization, demands physical fitness: ‘Our finest manhood is being tested,’ the War Office continues, stressing the importance of long-term training for youth. ‘Endurance, discipline, and strength of mind and body cannot be developed in a few weeks; the foundations must be solidly laid down during the 14–18 age group.’ Crucial to the survival of the nation, ‘comprehensive training’ was also understood to be an important element of national citizenship. ‘If intelligently applied,’ the manual asserts, comprehensive training ‘will not only develop physique and stamina, but will develop character, courage, leadership, initiative, and team and self-discipline, which are the foundations of good citizenship.’17 Physical fitness was a biopolitical project. The health of individuals was calibrated to the health of the nation, and so the fitness of the population became a deeply political concern. Concern for future wars and for the preparedness of the population to fight allowed physical education professionals and programs to recruit an ally in national government.18 Reconstruction planners made a pitch for the strong role that physical education should play in post-war life. Members of Parliament deliberated the importance of a physically fit population for the strength of the nation at war in a sombre and serious tone reminiscent of Kipling: ‘The need … for a program of physical fitness has been brought home to us by the war, and it is one that could be organized quickly … The value of physical fitness goes far beyond mere feats of strength and agility. Whether or not it was the Duke of Wellington who said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton – somebody did – and in doing so formulated an epigram of profound significance.’19 Sport was a means of training soldiers’ bodies for strength, endurance, and agility, as well as instilling discipline and an orientation towards teamwork. But sport had also demonstrated another use for the military during war: it was a handy tool for personnel selection. If sport could be used to train people to become effective soldiers, then certainly individual proclivities for different sports could be used to assess suitability for different military occupations, officers reasoned.
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Notes from 1942 on personnel selection procedures outline how in addition to early life ambitions and employment history, an applicant’s sports history was particularly pertinent for the military. Personnel Selection Guidelines that were produced at the RCAF Toronto recruiting unit and used to develop national standards explain how ‘the type of sports played will often give a clue to the type of applicant.’ The value of different sports was ranked, as was the connection between particular games and distinct personality traits. ‘Team play such as football, hockey, baseball or basketball should indicate co-operation and if elected captain, a sense of leadership.’ Meanwhile, other sports such as skiing, motorcycling, and diving ‘indicate above average nerve.’20 The army cadets’ physical training guide further elaborates on the specific military benefits of training boys’ bodies for particular sports. With detail that amasses to over two hundred pages, the guide dissects the bodily movements and psychological challenges associated with dozens and dozens of sports, and connects these with the specific benefits that could be applied to war work.21 The war also fuelled bold transformations in domestic civilian life that made sport an important part of social government. As I will discuss in more detail in the next chapter, the war fuelled the rapid urbanization of Canadian work and life and spurred anxieties about the extent and nature of environmental change. Social workers became concerned for children’s moral health in the growing cities, and social reformers proposed public recreation as a means of stabilizing their welfare. Social welfare agencies argued that the provision of recreation facilities was an essential means of encouraging productive leisure time among youth, and thus of ensuring the moral as well as physical health of the population. Writing in 1941, the Canadian Welfare Council (1941:10) asserted: The community centres and recreation agencies are being jammed, especially in the military and manufacturing centres. The protection of a large selection of our youth, against the inroads of immorality and disease will depend in no small measure upon the community’s support of those agencies which seek to offer at no cost wholesome recreation facilities against the glamorous competition of much meretricious commercialized amusement. Citizens are ready to support canteens, hits, writing rooms for the active services. Canada’s war contribution being what it is, the demand for similar services is equally imperative for our young munitions and clerical workers, many living in towns for the first time.
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These multiple motives for governing citizenship through physical education pushed the state to make significant investments in recreation and sport as part of the reconstruction effort. In 1947 the Canadian Welfare Council established a committee to study the ‘problem of recruiting and training leaders for the recreation field.’22 Its report addressed a wide range of themes in the coordination of recreation in Canada, with emphasis on developing new curriculum and professional training for recreation specialists, expanding labour market opportunities for recreation leaders, and coordinating between community recreation centres. In addition to the general expansion of public recreation and sporting programs in this period, physical education was explicitly militarist in orientation at times. For instance, cadet programs became mandatory in schools in order to instil discipline and fitness in the youth population at large. Sport was also an important aspect of life within the newly professionalized, volunteer armed forces. After the tremendous violence and bloodshed of the world wars, politicans and military officials came to value the idea of having a standing force, specially trained to handle a variety of problems. Canada would thereafter maintain a volunteer peacetime military comprised of three services: air, land, and sea. But managing a large standing military rather than temporary, emergency forces meant the military would have to address a wide range of costly and complicated aspects of the daily social reproduction of personnel. Planning and coordinating community life for soldiers began to absorb significant instalments of military time and effort. This scale of investment in recreation was indicative of the tremendous importance that defence planners attributed to personnel fitness. In 1959 the Defence Council committed to invest $5 million per year for a five-year period to construct new recreation facilities for service personnel. The total invested sum of $25,310,775 was in addition to the money already invested in recreation through the base command of each service. In a report to the Defence Council, the Personnel Members Committee outlined the role of recreation in the basic effectiveness of the armed forces. The committee writes: ‘It has been recognized by industry and the military that a well organized recreation programme is essential in order to stimulate physical fitness and mental health. For purely professional reasons, members of the Services must maintain a very high standard of physical fitness. From a morale point of view, servicemen require something constructive to occupy their leisure hours. To a very real degree, therefore, the efficiency of the three Services is dependent
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upon the recreation facilities immediately available and the encouragement that servicemen receive to take advantage of them.’23 Maintaining a standing force in the post-war period also meant that the military community was subject to the same baby boom as the rest of Canada. The military thus found itself with responsibilities for aspects of childcare in the public/private spaces of the base. Recreation became a means of managing this challenge. ‘The teenage population of Married Quarter communities,’ a policy statement explains, ‘constitutes a problem which demands immediate attention.’ Thus, ‘a vigorous programme of practical assistance is needed using both public and non-public funds.’24 Intimate Militarism Popular and government responses to the Cold War played a profound role in constructing and policing the symbolic and material borders of citizenship by demonizing if not outrightly criminalizing a range of non-normative citizens, including gays and lesbians, feminists, socialists, communists, and ethno-racial and linguistic minorities (Cavell 2004). In contrast to the staid and tolerant image of Canada that sometimes emerges from comparisons with the Cold War United States, the governments of both countries were involved in the strict regulation of political belief and affiliation, of sexual practices, of the mobility and expression of immigrants and ethno-racial minorities, and more generally the scrutiny of social, cultural, and political difference (Iacovetta Swyripa, and Epps 2004). In fact, while there are important differences to the American and Canadian experiences of the Cold War, one leading scholar from the period found an abundance of parallels in government clampdowns on immigrants with suspected socialist or communist affiliations. ‘The absence of a Canadian McCarthyite movement in the early 1950s’ indicated to S.D. Clark, a leading Canadian sociologist, ‘a more closed political system and tighter elite control’ (quoted in Whitaker and Marcuse 1994:282). Clark argued that McCarthyism was actually evidence of greater political openness in the United States. He wrote, ‘In spite of the witch hunts in that country, the people of the United States enjoy a much greater degree of freedom than do the people of Canada. We could scarcely have a witch hunt when we have no witches.’ No doubt, Canada created its own share of ‘witches’ in this period, but Clark’s point suggests that the degree of political conservatism at the time led ‘witches’ to keep very quiet.
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While these debates about comparative Cold War politics are ongoing and complex, it is clear that censorship was rampant and the persecution of social and political difference was common. According to activist and scholar Gary Kinsman (2004:113–14), Canada’s Cold War was not simply about East versus West. Kinsman contests the ‘hegemonic view of the Cold War’ that represents the conflict as one exclusively between American and Soviet empires, rather than also or even primarily about politics within the polity. He contends that Canada’s Cold War ‘was also a war against transformative working-class movements and movements of the oppressed, including anti-Stalinist working-class political movements. Similarly, it was very much a Cold War to reassert gender and sexual “normality” after the social disruptions of the Second World War mobilizations.’ Indeed, Kinsman and Gentile (1998) have documented the elaborate campaigns launched by the federal government during the Cold War to police normative sexuality, and to purge ‘deviants’ from the civil service. They demonstrate that the federal government committed large security operations and employee hours to these tasks with projects such as the ‘Fruit Machine,’ which attempted to identify homosexuals within the federal civil service ‘scientifically.’ Developed by the RCMP, the fruit machine was used in a campaign to expunge all homosexuals from the civil service, the military, and the RCMP in the 1950s and 1960s. The device would measure an individual’s biological response to images, many of which were homoerotic pornography, and in this way was supposed to identify homosexuals. The fruit machine measured the dilation of the pupils, perspiration, and pulse of suspected homosexuals, who were not made aware of the nature of the test. In this way sexually deviant citizens were understood as a threat to the nation’s security. Through selective recruitment practices and entrance requirements, the military reinforced the production of normative citizenship in the post-war period. Military recruiting materials saturated the public sphere but relied on strategies that were intensely intimate, ‘private,’ and particular. This intimacy was in part geographic; this national institution made efforts to connect to the very local identities and cultures of citizens. When recruiting was strained during the early Cold War build-up, the military began targeting potential recruits in local places by publicizing the experiences of other local youth in the armed forces. Stories and pictures of the achievements of local youth in the service would provide precedent and familiarity and stir the interest for other boys. In 1950 the military developed procedures to collect photos of recruits at regular and set intervals in the training process
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and to issue press releases to local media.25 Commanding officers were also instructed to ‘give the matter their fullest cooperation’ seeing as the effective staffing of the services was on the line.26 Recruiting strategies were also ‘intimate’ in the sense that they aimed to connect with and reshape the identities and cultural practices of citizens, particularly in the realm of gendered and sexual relations. The common sense and academic division of public and private spheres cannot capture the role of state institutions in the shaping of ‘the private self’ (cf. Berlant 1997; Rose 1999). Rather, the public/private divide may be better understood as highly ideological and an effect of particular regimes of government. When ‘public’ institutions and practices regulate the details of ‘private’ life, and when the assumptions and norms of ‘private’ life are the foundational assumptions that govern the construction of the ‘public’ politics of labour markets and citizenship, this division offers little descriptive value. The categories help constitute rather than simply represent practices. Post-war military recruiters designed materials and messages specifically for the wives and girlfriends of potential soldiers. They worked to generate an ideal of patriotic masculinity that no woman was supposed to be able to resist. During the war, the military developed complex media campaigns to recruit personnel. Using radio spots and brochures, the military pressured women to pressure men to take up arms, and these practices persisted after the war. In fact, there was little disruption to the work of recruiters with the end of the war. Many of the military’s files on recruitment propaganda and media advertising span the war and post-war years without any perceptible break. Some files span the period 1942 to 1947; others span 1940 to 1948, often with the same managing personnel.27 Indeed, the Personnel Selection Branch (PSB) that housed recruiting functions was founded in 1941 and had the same director until 1966. After a brief downsizing of capacities in 1945, the PSB began to expand again only three years later. Often, the same staff were hired back on as Personnel Selection Officers, and despite the dramatic shift in context – i.e., peace – there was little change in the organizational structure or basic strategy of the PSB from 1941 to 1966 (Anderson 1992). Mothers, Wives, and ‘Modern Women’: Gendered Recruitment and Citizenship In 1942 the military produced a radio program targeted at the wives and girlfriends of potential recruits. It explains this circuitous route in
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internal memos: ‘It is our experience that it is quite impossible to reach [young men] directly and effectively by radio appeals. None the less, radio is a very powerful medium.’ Out of this complicated opportunity the military became convinced ‘that radio should be used, not so much to attempt to influence directly our prospective airmen, as the mothers and fathers, the girl friends and others capable of directing their thinking. It should be an easy task to convince a bright and ambitious girl friend that her particular boy should join the Air Force. It immediately raises her prestige amongst her girl acquaintances and we count upon her cooperation being easily won.’28 While there was also mention of gearing ads towards fathers, the programming that was actually produced was aimed at women. A particularly elaborate plan was developed for mothers. The air force wanted mothers to feel as though they themselves were a part of the service. The RCAF developed plans to incorporate mothers into military life by producing a regular radio program geared specifically for them. Not only could military mothers participate in a military ritual from their homes, but the RCAF would also reward ‘honoured mothers’ with a silver insignia, a material memento signifying their belonging. An RCAF memo reports: The general plan of the radio program is to dramatize the life and personality of a typical RCAF mother, and to set off her story against a factual background of information about the RCAF … Since the program, ‘The Winged Rose,’ is a tribute of the RCAF to the gallant mothers of its airmen, at the opening of each broadcast we will announce the name of a mother whose name has been drawn out as the Honoured Mother of the Week. If she lives close to one of the network stations, she will come to the studio. There a high-ranking officer will say a few words, congratulate her, present her in the name of the CBC with a special silver insignia … The mother would be made to feel that she herself is a member of the RCAF.29
Despite their own massive contribution to the war effort, women’s own worker-citizenship was rapidly revoked after the war and their labour reassigned to the domestic sphere (Struthers 1998). Nearly 50,000 women served in the Canadian military during the Second World War (CFPARU 1996a), and many times that number worked for the war effort in munitions factories and other wartime industries. Nevertheless, the post-war national project demanded a different kind of service from women – that they get out of the way of working men and get into line working at home. Labour market policy and citizenship
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rights were deeply entwined. As Hope Stoddard would write in the Canadian Forum in 1946, ‘A woman’s sense of not belonging in the social order, or of belonging only through citizenship gained through some male, is founded, not on hypersensitivity but on plain fact.’30 Military regulations surrounding gender and employment were indicative of the deeply masculinist configuration of worker-citizenship. During the war, women were treated as ‘substitute bodies’ (Griggers 1997). Women’s enlistment was residual and contingent on shortages of men. This is nowhere more clear than in orders issued to recruiters instructing them to never promise re-enlistment or promotion to female recruits, in stark contrast with offers made to male recruits. Military employment is always in some regards an instrumental recruitment of human ‘resources’ to meet defence quotas. Age, education, and other eligibility criteria can be raised or lowered to meet personnel needs. And yet, while men’s eligibility for service was measured according to a range of characteristics, women as a category of person were used as a residual and surplus labour force. In this way women’s service would protect the primacy of male employment while still helping the state achieve defence objectives. With the end of the war, the women’s divisions that existed in all three services of the armed forces were quickly dismantled. Cold War rearmament and the large-scale build-up of troops that ensued led the military to reopen select occupations to women, but with firm limits on the kinds of positions that they were able to occupy. The rationale for these restrictions was not even clear to their own officials. It was increasingly known that women were participating in combat roles in the armed forces of communist countries, and this made it difficult for officials to assert that biology determined military capability. In fact, in the 1950s the military had no consistent rationale for excluding women from the full range of service employment, except that it could fill its prized occupations with men. The military’s motive – the maintenance of a particular masculine model of economic, political, and socio-cultural organization centred on the assumed primacy of employment for the male breadwinner – was increasingly transparent. It was these assumptions of post-war workercitizenship that structured the gendered organization of ‘military manpower.’ In April 1958, Wing Commander T.J. MacKinnon replied to a string of inquiries from a young woman, Miss Gilbert, eager to become a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force. MacKinnon openly admits the lack of solid or coherent rationale for denying women entry into aircrew occupations. Nevertheless, he is resolute in his defence of the policy:
Post-War Citizenship: Mass and Militarized 91 Dear Miss Gilbert; Although there is nothing in RCAF regulations which specifies why women are precluded from becoming Service pilots, we have always been able to fill our pilot requirements from male manpower sources available. As a result, we have been able to avoid the administrative problems such as housing, design of clothing, flying equipment, and the problem inherent in marriage which would arise if we employed women as pilots. Furthermore, there are some trades in which women, generally speaking, are not employed. I refer specifically to trades which require a peculiar degree of physical exertion and of stamina not normally associated with womanhood. This is borne out by the fact that with certain exceptions such as Russia, North Korea, Red China, women are not employed as military pilots – and not ordinarily as commercial pilots with civilian airlines. No doubt there are a number of women who could meet the rigid medical standards imposed by the Air Force in its pilot selection, but the other drawbacks are such that their employment is not considered practical. Please be assured that our decision is not meant to discriminate against women as such, as is evidenced by our employment of women personnel in other trades in the Air Force.31
Women’s military service at this time was situated precariously at the borders of respectability and indecency. Women had proven their competence and efficiency in a range of occupations during the war, and were re-employed during the Cold War build-up to form a particular khakishaded but pink-collar ghetto of stenographers, secretaries, signals operators, and health and recreation specialists. A press release issued upon the dismantling of the last Women’s Division of the RCAF explained: The [RCAF] Women’s Division have played an important role in the War Effort of Canada. The members of the WD have served in nearly all branches of Air Force work. They have done clerical work of all descriptions, have served in Aerodrome Control Towers, in Operations Rooms, Equipment Sections, Accounts Offices, many of them were employed as chefs, as wireless operators, transport drivers, instructors, as hospital assistants and technicians, and in numerous other trades. In some of these trades, the girls proved to be more efficient than Airmen, and have been greatly missed in their sections, as they left to resume their places in civilian life.32
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The military used women to fill administrative and support services, paid them less, and kept a firm limit on their numbers. During the 1950s and 1960s, a maximum of 1,500 women were admitted into all three services (CFPARU 1996a:5). Women’s military service was furthermore dependent on the fluctuating ‘need for womanpower’ (CFPARU 1996a:6). Only single women were enlisted, and they were released from service if they were married or became pregnant. Women’s eligibility was also contingent on being under age 29. During the war many women well into their 40s had served, but in the postwar period women’s service was conceptualized as a bridge from youth to marriage. These practices continued until 1971, when the military finally observed the 1967 recommendations from the Royal Commission on the Status of Women that they be suspended. The military was caught between trying to muster a service ethic among young women while also making every attempt to preserve the arbitrary limits on their role as workers. The military worked to cultivate these contradictory desires through recruiting appeals to women that promoted the figure of the ‘modern woman.’ This modern woman was always feminine but also independent and firmly adventurous, as evidenced by her desire for travel. During the Second World War the military’s appeals to women emphasized a cosmopolitan image and promises of the excitement and glamour of travel to new places. In a typical appeal to women to join the Canadian Women’s Army Corps (CWAC), the focus was entirely on the glamour of musical shows in European capitals with hardly a mention of work: London and Paris have a lot of musical shows. There was ‘Odds and Ends’ with the wonderful comedian, Arthur Playfair. And there was ‘Chu-Chin-Chow’ and ‘Watch Your Step’ at the Empire Theatre. I’ll never forget the speeches that Horratio Bottomley used to make during that show. And at the Ambassadors was the wonderful revue called ‘More’ with Alicia Delysia and Leon Morton and Jimmy Campbell. And there was another revue called ‘Half Past Eight’ and over in Paris there was always the Folies-Bergeres with Mistinguett …33
Post-war radio ads helped to define this adventurous modern woman, but they did so specifically by emphasizing the temporary nature of her adventurous attitude. The modern woman clearly wanted excitement and independence, and was entitled to it, but only as an appetizer to be followed by domestic married life. The following
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Plate 3.12 ‘Modern Work for Modern Women’ Source: Advertisement ‘RCAF Modern Work for Modern Women’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/ RG24, E-1C, accession 1983-84/49, vol. 3, box 290, file 304-20-7.
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Plate 3.13 ‘Modern Work for the Modern Woman’ Source: Advertisement ‘Modern Work for the Modern Woman’ ‘if you are between the ages of 18 and 29 … ’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/ National Defence fonds/RG24, accession 1983-84/049, vol. 3, box 290, file 304-20-7.
radio transcript from an ad that aired in 1957 interpellates the listener in this way. It reinforces her desire for freedom and fun as valuable and honourable qualities, particularly when channelled into national service, so long as her expectations eventually lead her to married life: Young woman, how old are you? Are you working? Have you finished school? Are you married? Like most young women, you will be married some day. But in the meantime, you’ll be thinking about how to earn a better living. The RCAF has outstanding opportunities for young women. Right from the start, you get regular pay while you train for an unusual and exciting job in the modern field of aviation. You’ll enjoy a life with plenty of action in a field that’s full of action. You’ll have a chance to travel – see Canada and maybe Europe. You’ll make new friends wherever you go. So if you’re thinking about the future – think about the Royal Canadian Air Force. It offers much to the modern young woman who enrols, trains and serves as an Airwoman in aviation … important work in which she can excel and be proud of.34
Women were thus encouraged to be ‘modern’ and enticed with travel and good pay, but they were also disciplined through the persistent and pervasive regulation of femininity. While military service
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created the possibility for some women to earn economic independence and temporary escape from the domesticity of post-war life, it was not an escape from the policing of gender norms in post-war Canada. The military ‘policing’ of both femininity and masculinity was deliberate. Indeed, the performance of military masculinities was regulated through uniforms, fraternization rules, and the purging of homosexuals from the service (Kinsman and Gentile 1998; Kinsman 2004). However, there was no parallel with men for the fact that women in uniform were expected to be ‘ladies first.’ Historically, the Wrens, the navy’s women’s unit, wore a ‘smart little hat that tops the tailored uniform,’ which was worn according to civilian rather than military dress codes. The hat was ‘worn on the same occasions as she wore those fashionable little hats in civilian life. Because a Wren is a lady before she’s in the navy, she conducts herself like one, rather than like a sailor.’35 Navy women continued to debate regulations governing their hats and whether they would follow military or civilian standards until very recently. What this suggests is that the duty to perform femininity came before their duty as enlisted personnel to their nation. Military work was also clearly defined as essentially masculine, and so women in the service would have to perform special rituals to resist being absorbed into this masculine mass. Ambivalence about the role of women in the military, and, in particular, a desire to keep them feminine while they entered the world of ‘modern women’ through the performance of ‘modern work,’ was also clear in recruitment ads that emphasized ‘feminine’ qualities, like those shown in Plates 3.14 and 3.15 from a 1958 series. Governing women’s service through the details of dress style and feminine bodily conduct and mannerism had a historical precedent during the war. At that time, uniform style became a central means for managing women’s military work. By 1940 the three armed services had each initiated separate women’s units, but rather than collaborating to meet personnel needs, the services competed for recruits. This competition took place first and foremost through the design of women’s division uniforms, and it was sometimes fierce. Inter-service tensions broke out when the navy claimed that its women’s uniform was more feminine than the air force’s. Memos expressing the gravity of the situation flew within and between services in response. Alreadyheated debates escalated when the army asserted in print media that its Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (CWAC) uniforms were ‘the smartest’ of all services (see Plate 3.16). In response, air force officials sent a
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Plate 3.14 ‘Neat, Trim … and Efficient’ Source: Advertisement ‘Neat, Trim … and Efficient’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, accession 1983-84/049, vol. 3, box 290, file 304-20-7.
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Plate 3.15 ‘An Exciting Career’ Source: Advertisement ‘An Exciting Career … travel at home and abroad … ’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, accession 1983-84/049, vol. 3, box 290, file 304-20-7.
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Plate 3.16 ‘The Smartest Women’s Service’ Source: Advertisement ‘The Smartest Women’s Service’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, accession 1983-84/049, vol. 3374, HQ 433-3-6, part 1.
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hostile letter to the army recruiters, accusing the army of undermining the entire war effort. They asserted that ‘undercutting’ the competition worked well in private sector advertising but was destructive in a context where they were fighting the same war.36 The air force nevertheless participated in the same kind of inter-service competition through uniform design. In 1942 Air Commodore Middleton considered the army’s recent campaigns: The attached recruiting ad for the C.W.A.C. illustrates what we have to compete with in our publicity. It will be noted that the C.W.A.C. are stressing their smart uniform and that, furthermore, their recruiting office coverage in the Maritimes is extensive, comprising seven offices. Our own approaches and enlistment figures for the WD’s are still on the decline. I consider that we should take urgent and speedy action to get our publicity under way.37
The three services arranged to have stories about their uniforms written in fashion magazines, such as the Rayon Reporter. They organized invitations for their personnel to speak at luncheons in New York hosted by fashion magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, and they took elaborate surveys of their recruits to figure out which elements of their uniforms were popular and which could be improved (better stockings were the unanimous priority for servicewomen).38 The army and air force even volunteered personnel from their women’s divisions to pose for a ‘girlie’ calendar in 1943, arguing that it would go towards supporting the recruiting efforts.39 Women were thus asked to dawn skimpy swimwear for the nation. The practice of both celebrating women’s modernity and disciplining actual servicewomen through the regulation of clothing and other markers of femininity persisted through the Cold War. An elaborate feature article about women in the air force written by recruiting staff appeared in the Canadian Geographical Journal in 1956, entitled ‘Canada’s Air Force: New Horizons for the Modern Woman.’ Like the wartime propaganda, the article emphasized the independence and excitement of travel, regular pay, and responsibility, as well as the social and personal grace and femininity of female personnel. As the captions of the article’s photographs (Plates 3.18 and 3.19) asserted, the airwoman was ‘neat and trim in her uniform,’ and part of a ‘fashion parade.’ Airwomen are also shown ‘taking advantage of their opportunities to travel when on leave’ and ‘shopping for souvenirs of the Eiffel Tower.’40
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Plate 3.17 ‘Functional Fashion for 1943’ Source: Advertisement ‘Functional Fashion for 1943’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, accession 1983-84/049, vol. 3374, file HQ 433-3-6, part 1.
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Neat and trim in her uniform, the airwoman plays an important role in the R.C.A.F. today. Plate 3.18 ‘Neat and Trim’ Source: P/O A. Outman. 1956. ‘Canada’s Air Force: New Horizons for the Modern Woman.’ Canadian Geographical Journal.
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A fashion parade for airwomen. Plate 3.19 ‘A Fashion Parade’ Source: P/O A. Outman. 1956. ‘Canada’s Air Force: New Horizons for the Modern Woman.’ Canadian Geographical Journal.
The persecution of sexual dissidents was the flip side of the production of social order built on heavily normative models of gender and the family in Cold War Canada. Kinsman (2004:116) cites the important role played by federal institutions in all this when he writes that ‘campaigns against queers were also integrally tied up with practices of gender regulation and the redrawing of boundaries of heterosexual “normality” following the Second World War.’ Kinsman specifically identifies the military’s contribution to the constitution of normative sexuality and gender roles. ‘Gender regulations,’ he suggests, ‘were imposed on women as they entered into the public service and the military. These included dress codes and beauty contests, in the attempt to secure the performance of heterosexual femininity in the civil service.’ The military’s approach to gender and sexual norms was thus central to the broader project of regulating social order in post-war life. The strict norms of gender and family were a core component of the male breadwinner economy and this regime of worker-citizenship.
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‘Race,’ Language, and Iconic Military Citizenship In addition to gender and sexuality, ‘race,’ ethnicity, religion, and language were also key axes of social differentiation in military work and citizenship. This was nowhere more obvious than with regard to the assumed primacy of the English language and English Canadians. During the war and for more than two decades afterwards, the military explicitly treated French Canadians as ‘second-class’ citizens. French Canadians were described as a distinct race, a people in need of paternalistic guidance and instruction. The ‘French-speaking and French-thinking people of the Province of Quebec are a people entirely of themselves,’ air force recruiting directives explained. They have ‘a natural inferiority complex and an inborn fear of being scorned by their English-speaking brothers.’41 This paternalism combined with the military’s masculinist norms to yield recruiting campaigns, such as one ‘designed particularly for feminine consumption’: In the French-Canadian home the woman plays an important role and exercises an important influence over the thoughts and actions of the children. Up to the present no thought has been given to the mother’s flying education, and she is little disposed to regard the air as a career for her sons to follow. We must get at that mother. Cold facts alone will not do. Her inhibitions are based not on facts but on fear, and that fear has its foundation in ignorance. We attempt to appeal to her emotions. Her natural fear for the safety of her sons may be overcome by inspiring in her that pride all women take in the achievements of their men and by suggesting the comforting thought that what her boys are learning today will make them leaders in the world of tomorrow. Probably our headline would be ‘C’est mon garcon!’ – ‘It’s my boy’ and from the ranks we would show emerging a very ordinary and lovable son and a mother. In the foreground we should show other admiring women. The copy need not be long. When women are moved by a book, by a photograph, or by any touching scene their minds beat as fastly as their hearts, and the less said the better.42
The CF enlisted a large number of French Canadians in the armed forces, but few were promoted to officer status or high rank. The CF did not take the second-class citizenship of French Canadians in the military seriously until the rise of separatist activism and the subsequent introduction of federal bilingual language laws in the 1960s (Morton 1990:258). Granatstein (2004:112) describes how until the 1963
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Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Canada would not ‘admit it had a linguistic and cultural problem threatening its survival – and the armed forces were part of that problem.’ In 1966, 73 per cent of Canadian Forces officers were Anglophone and of British origin, while 12.5 per cent were Francophone; meanwhile, for enlisted ranks ‘the percentages were 63 and 20.3.’ Morton (1990:258) further contends, ‘The forces illustrated most of the problems French Canadians experienced with federal institutions.’ French Canadians were welcome to join up, and in fact were the subjects of elaborate recruitment campaigns. But before the changes of the late 1960s, if they decided to enlist they faced a future in an English and explicitly Anglo institution. Military structure was geared towards the norms of English Canadians, and this directly shaped policies in a range of less obvious ways. For instance, policies for dependent families and spouses of military personnel were explicitly geared to the reproductive patterns of EnglishCanadian families. These military policies further left their mark on the civilian welfare state. For instance, the Marsh Report, which adopted military policies as a basis for the design of post-war welfare in Canada, is known to have differed from Britain’s Beveridge Plan in one important respect. The Marsh Report favoured smaller families and thus Protestantism over French Catholicism (Christie 2000:290). Language was also a means of regulating ‘race’ and ethnicity in the armed forces. Throughout the 1950s officers within the military headquarters and recruiters managing outreach efforts debated how best to conduct relations with ‘foreign-language’ newspapers. In 1957 the air force refused to place ads or stories in foreign-language papers outright. Officers even denied a request for information about the CF from a Canadian multilingual newspaper. But internal memos reveal that there was very clearly a great deal of confusion regarding official military policy on these matters, and that there were furthermore a number of normative assumptions operative with regard to who belonged to the body politic. One exchange regarding a request for information about the air force from a newspaper ‘printed in English, French, German, Italian and Dutch and … directed to new Canadians’ is suggestive in this regard. ‘In view of our difficulties re: citizenship status as things stand,’ one memo asserts in an extraordinary conflation of language and citizenship status, ‘this would appear to be a most inappropriate piece of business – asking only for more grief.’ A formal response to this memo suggests that any response to the multilingual newspaper ‘does nothing to encourage non-Canadian citizens to believe that they
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will have an opportunity to join the RCAF. The RCAF does not recruit aliens and we certainly would not like to create the impression that we do.’43 The decision was eventually made to send public relations information about the air force to the newspaper, but to withhold all details about career options. This conflation of two clearly distinct statuses of language and citizenship rested on the assumption that people who spoke foreign languages were also, by necessity, foreigners. The racism of Canadian immigration policy at this time in fact gave priority to Anglophone migrants and meant the assumption that formal citizenship status was interchangeable with language group was not entirely unfounded. Indeed, citizenship status at this time was granted on the basis of national origin, with the British Isles at the top of the list. And yet, this assumption that language was a proxy for citizenship status would shape recruiting practices until well into the 1970s, when the military’s demographic homogeneity started to be conceptualized as a problem to correct rather than a given to protect. Officials did occasionally make mistakes, directing recruiting materials to diverse language groups. However, the handling of these cases only reinforced these normative and perhaps racist assumptions about national belonging. In 1959, for instance, a recruiting ad for women in the RCAF was accidentally placed in a German-language newspaper (Plate 3.20). When the situation was brought to the attention of air force officers, an anxious exchange ensued. The advertisement was circulated among officers and provoked some panic about a possible rush of German applicants to recruiting offices.44 The ad itself was stored in the military’s files along with the correspondence about possible mechanisms for damage control. In fact, explicit directives limited enrolment to the CF on the grounds of ‘race.’ While the three services had different regulations governing enlistment, and with the army technically open to participation by racialized groups, a document outlining ‘regulations and instructions’ for the Royal Canadian Navy from 1942 asserts that the recruit must be ‘of the white race and is a natural born British subject.’ Air force regulations in effect in 1942 outlined how a ‘candidate for appointment to a commission (i.e. – an officer) must be … of pure European descent and a British subject’ (Mehfil 2003). Canadian citizenship in the post-war period was broadly organized around norms of whiteness and Anglophone identity. The emerging panCanadian citizenship was informed by the wartime legacy of managing
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Plate 3.20 ‘Start Training Now’ Source: Advertisement ‘Start training now – Modern work for modern women’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, accession 1983-84/049, vol. 3, box 290, file 304-20-7.
and containing difference in the interest of national unity. I briefly mentioned the mass internment of Japanese Canadians and the dispossession of their rights and property. This event clearly points to the racialized constitution of national insecurity, suspicion, and anxiety (Ishikawa 2003). The administration of ‘aliens’ during the war even led the Canadian Welfare Council to comment, ‘The defence of Canada regulations, registration of aliens, and National Registration, have not been without their disquieting effects upon people, already with a sense of insecurity because of economic need, or racial or religious prejudice’ (1941:2). The incarceration and dispossession of Japanese Canadians was the most severe example of the treatment of ethnoracial minorities during the Second World War; however, this was in many ways the most visible ‘tip of the iceberg’ for a government that administered citizenship through a racialized imaginary. Immigrants who were not Anglophone were all suspect to some degree. The loyalty of immigrant groups became a pressing concern for the Canadian
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state during the war. Lesley Pal (1989) has documented how the institutions and techniques developed during the war to secure the loyalty of immigrant communities directly informed the development of the Citizenship Act, and later multiculturalism policy. Indeed, officials experimented with a variety of new practices for managing difference and encouraging patriotism, which included making appeals to different groups in their first languages, and broadcasting to them that their difference was a building block for the unity of Canada (cf. Pal 1989). The development of more benevolent strategies that aimed to secure the allegiance of diverse communities for the war effort stood in strong contrast with the more disciplinary strategies deployed during the First World War for the same purpose, and in some ways then parallels the changing government of labour in the First and Second World Wars. This emphasis on difference as a constitutive force in national unity furthermore became a core logic of Canada’s particular brand of multicultural nationalism (cf. Kernerman 2004). The fact that this bedrock ideal of national identity might have first developed as a wartime technology, an instrumental means of ensuring the support and compliance of distinct groups for the war effort, challenges both popular and scholarly histories. Indeed, Pal (1989) argues that wartime policies are a potent omission in scholarship on Canadian multiculturalism, which typically attributes its genesis to the 1960s and the work of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. Rather, Pal argues that a ‘direct lineage’ can be traced from the wartime Nationalities Branch and the ‘problem of ethnic loyalty’ to the multiculturalism policy of 1971. While the military sought to exclude immigrants and racialized groups from the ranks after the war, it was simultaneously heavily involved in the ongoing colonial project of ‘integrating’ Aboriginals. In partnership with church-run residential schools45 and the Indian Affairs Branch of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, cadets were a core part of the federal government presence in the North and on reserves. In 1958, in a debate about the segregation of cadet units, H.G. Cook, the superintendent of Indian school administration of the Anglican Church of Canada, wrote to Colonel Jones, the director of Indian Affairs Branch, Department of Citizenship and Immigration: ‘It is our opinion that apart from any other factor such as discipline, training, etc. these air cadet activities are extremely valuable from the standpoint of integration of Indian boys with White boys.
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Even in the case where the actual unit is all-Indian the Indian cadets have a grand opportunity to live and work with the white cadets at summer camp and to associate with them at local cadet activities throughout the year.’46 In the same year the Indian commissioner for British Columbia wrote that his office was ‘greatly impressed with the integrating values of [cadet] camps to these lads.’47 The racist paternalism of the federal government and the military in particular was starkly evident a few years earlier when Aboriginal parents opposed their sons’ entry into cadets. In 1953 military officials deliberated whether the permission of Aboriginal parents was necessary for their children’s participation. Officers concluded that, in this case, parental permission should not be sought out. This decision was a part of a broader and often brutal disregard for the will and rights of Aboriginal people in Canada. In fact, it wasn’t until 1960 that Aboriginals were even granted the right to vote in federal elections. Thus, while it was in these early post-war years that a sense of pan-Canadian identity and citizenship was in the early years of consolidation, this identity and citizenship was nonetheless selective, exclusive, and highly normalizing in its sweep, defined in relation to outsiders of various kinds, even as, in the case of Aboriginal peoples, they were outsiders within. Recruiting Soldiers after War [The nation] is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such imaginings. (Anderson 1992:7)
The production of otherness is central to the establishment of norms of citizenship. As Isin (2002:x) writes, ‘Citizenship and otherness are then really not two different conditions, but two aspects of the ontological condition that makes politics possible.’ We’ve seen that the workercitizen, and in particular the military citizen, was not only male; he was English speaking, white, heterosexual, and so on, even as there were women and people of diverse ethnic and linguistic heritage who served. Indeed, this is the work of political norms in governing social forms. They are never empirically ‘accurate,’ nor do they simply
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‘represent’ anything. Rather, norms are performative in that they produce particular subjects and social orders. The white, male, Anglo workercitizen was not alone in the labour market, nor was he ever an entirely real figure in politics; nevertheless, he provided a means of organizing political claims and post-war political-economic and cultural order. I have offered some discussion about the ways various groups of people were constituted outside of these norms of citizenship. But an equally important means for investigating the production of norms is through an examination of the qualities invested in the normal citizen. Many of these qualities are easily accessed through the images and ideas embedded in military recruitment ads. One image that repeats over and over again in recruitment ads from the 1950s features a young man, ‘Canadian,’ white, physically fit, able-bodied, and well groomed, engaged in productive and industrious activities with his peers. The RCAF ads shown in Plates 3.21 to 3.24 are a good illustration. This iconic worker-citizen was not simply free to live in peace while all other lives were structured and regulated. The soldier of the postwar period was as much a political production as the feminine modern woman, or the ‘peculiar’ French Canadian. The worker-citizen was also a historically and geographically specific subject of government. Perhaps it is not surprising to suggest that discipline was at the centre of the government of military citizenship. The soldier was supposed to be disciplined, follow orders, and put the group before self. But in a professional standing force, he was also expected to be a responsible individual within a national capitalist political economy. The demands of the professional soldier saw official efforts to encourage particular forms of soldierly conduct and self-discipline not only through the official routines of military training. The banalities of housing provision, for example, were an important means of cultivating collective identities and individual consumer responsibilities simultaneously. The military provided housing to soldiers in order to facilitate the unusual tenure and mobility patterns of personnel, and also to build a common military culture physically separate from civilian communities. At the same time, the military was hesitant to encourage ‘socialist’ expectations among soldiers by administering housing outside the market. The military home as both private space and military property could simultaneously help to privatize and collectivize the soldier. A system of ‘Entrepreneur Housing’ was developed in the 1950s that contracted private developers to build and manage military family housing but according to military specifications. Private firms would be the
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Plate 3.21 ‘Know Where You’re Going’ Source: Advertisement ‘Know Where You’re Going …’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, accession 1983-84/049, vol. 3, box 290, file 304-20-7.
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Plate 3.22 ‘Competence in the Air’ Source: Advertisement ‘Competence in the air and on the ground’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, accession 1983-84/049, vol. 3, box 290, file 304-20-7.
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Plate 3.23 ‘Fly with the RCAF’ Source: Advertisement ‘Fly with the RCAF’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, accession 1983-84/ 049, vol. 3, box 290, file 304-20-7.
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Plate 3.24 ‘Aim High’ Source: Advertisement ‘Aim High … Go Aircrew’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, accession 1983-84/049, vol. 3, box 290, file 304-20-7.
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landlords to personnel rather than the military or another part of the state, even as the state regulated design, construction, maintenance, and rent. This allowed the military to ensure that despite their location in a total institution, personnel would understand their individual responsibility in the market for managing housing as a commodity rather than an entitlement. Military base planners assert that there was ‘one psychological advantage to the arrangement’ of ‘Entrepreneur Housing’ in a 1956 report. ‘The serviceman puts the blame for real or imagined household problems on the landlord and not on the service. Admittedly he expects the service to take up his case, but there is something to be said for fostering an independent outlook on housing.’48 The military provided extensive services and benefits to soldiers that were never available to civilians, but they were also worked to cultivate a sense of limited expectations and individual responsibility for provision. ‘Members of the Married Quarter community, as citizens,’ it was stated, ‘have a responsibility to provide from their own resources those facilities and services which they need but are not normally provided at public expense in the average civilian community.’ The expectation that the military citizen would orient himself towards private responsibility and private life was persistent, even as it stood in tension with his public duties and sacrifice. His ability to manage private property and private life, almost interchangeably, was an important indication of his public integrity. The details of housing design were furthermore carefully deliberated by military minds, and suggest that family life was an important and related domain for governing military citizens. I have already suggested that for state planners, building the post-war family measured with an urgency that paralleled efforts to rebuild the post-war economy. With the central role of the breadwinner in post-war political and cultural economies it is possible to argue that national and personal security was calibrated largely through the family. The family became a pressing management issue for the military with the establishment of voluntary professional armed forces. Barracks would no longer do for the career soldier – instead, he and his family required everyday lives that rivalled civilian comforts. ‘At every military, naval or air force base new “married quarters” had to be constructed’ at the start of the Cold War (Preston 1972:78). In their assessment of various housing types during the Cold War base expansion, military planners were convinced of the importance of ensuring ‘space for hobbies, play and private family life.’ They were confident that families would ‘undoubtedly’ choose ‘the single house if they could have it.’
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Post-War (Military) Welfare Patriotism and nationalism are often the product of careful cultivation and the persistent labour of negotiation rather than the spontaneous eruption of emotion. This is not to deny the power of instantaneous expressions that may accompany war (or even football games). Rather, it is an emphasis on the long process of assemblage that can make these powerful instants possible. We know well that nationalism is not a natural instinct but a historical, political-geographical phenomenon. A large and growing body of scholarship traces the genealogies of its possibility and practice (Anderson 1992; Hobsbawm 1990). What are less readily available are empirical studies of the technical and ‘on the ground’ work of consolidating allegiance. It is precisely the subtle and everyday calculations that make it possible for nationalism to do its work, or in other words, to get large numbers of people to do the dangerous work of the warring nation, that are available in an archive like this one. Both experimentation and cold calculation are evident in the military history of strategizing, planning, and problem solving the recruitment of willing war workers. National identification relies on a sense of entwined destiny with the nation, and this destiny cannot easily be divided into ‘symbolic’ and ‘material’ dimensions. The question of scale is crucial. Global and national political-geographic struggles are both enabled and interrupted by everyday, local political problems. The ability to muster arms for war can rely on the seemingly inconsequential details of the quality of soldiers’ housing, recreation programming, and childcare on bases. The less tangible and imagined belongings of nationalism rely on the immediate and intimate geographies of everyday life. During war and in the decades after, military service rested on a form of bargaining over these details of terms of service, which for this worker is also a bargaining over the terms of citizenship. As I outlined in the last chapter, it was during the Second World War that plans for post-war reconstruction were crafted, and this timing was a result of the need to support the morale of workers serving the war effort and to draw in new recruits. Wartime saw the boundaries of national citizenship and national labour so blurred that the distinction held little meaning. But even after the war, the challenge of distinguishing citizenship from labour relations for armed forces personnel is complicated at best. The military became increasingly entrepreneurial, and began to see itself as an employer in a competitive labour market, as I
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discuss in Chapter 5. However, this employer is also the national government and the ‘client’ is the ‘nation.’ Recruitment campaigns in the post–Second World War years still relied on a bargain of military service for social service, even as the civilian welfare state was being rapidly assembled (see Plates 3.25 to 3.27). Recruitment ads from the late 1940s and through to the early 1960s focus on the range of benefits that come with service life, from pensions to health care, housing, and training programs: THERE ARE OPENINGS RIGHT NOW to train in these IMPORTANT AVIATION TRADES … There’s permanent employment, good pay and a pension to look forward to. Medical and dental care, clothing, food and lodging are provided. You get regular service pay from the start. Get into a progressive field! Make aviation in the RCAF your career!49
One 13-page piece of recruitment propaganda that appeared in the 1954 Canadian Geographical Journal also brings to light the local geographies of this military welfare, describing the air force base as an autonomous city with all the needs of social reproduction built in. In this sense the military was at the cutting edge of a suburbanization of social life: In soliciting the services of keen ambitious youngsters the RCAF, like other services, has realized that it is bidding in a highly competitive market. This is one of the reasons why the air force has seen fit to provide amenities far beyond those made available by almost any other employer in Canada today. Most operational RCAF stations are actually small-scale cities. They comprise a place of work, clean and comfortable living quarters and complete facilities for recreation including bowling alleys, gymnasiums, swimming pools, hockey rinks, playing fields, theatres and libraries. They have their own newspapers, schools and places of worship. (Leckie 1954:100–13)
Expanding Civilian Welfare: Contracting Military Recruitment By the mid-1960s profound transformations were under way that would deeply affect military recruitment. Ironically, the post-war welfare state, which took shape in part through wartime innovations in techniques of government, started to become a serious obstacle for the
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Plate 3.25 ‘Join the Army Now’ Source: Advertisement ‘I Left a Good Selling Job to Rejoin the Army’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, accession 1983-84/049, vol. 1, box 290, file 304-20-8.
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Plate 3.26 ‘Training Today’ Source: Advertisement ‘Training Today for the challenge of tomorrow!’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, accession 1983-84/049, vol. 3, box 290, file 304-20-7.
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Plate 3.27 ‘Key Man’ Source: Advertisement ‘Key Man in this age of Aviation!’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, accession 1983-84/049, vol. 3, box 290, file 304-20-7.
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military. At this time, the civilian welfare state in Canada was becoming a vast and complex system of social security, with family allowance, pensions, unemployment assistance, education and training, and public health care. In other words, the material incentives that had long been the basis for drawing recruits into the military were becoming available to the general population as a part of the new pan-Canadian citizenship. In 1940 the federal government introduced unemployment insurance. In 1945 family allowance was initiated. In 1952 the Old Age Security Act was implemented, which established a federally funded pension and replaced older legislation from 1927 that required provinces to run cost-shared and means-tested old age benefits. Long-term unemployment assistance was implemented in 1956, and in 1965 the minimum age for the Old Age Security pension was lowered to 65. A year later, in 1966, the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans were created, as was medicare (following Saskatchewan). This massive expansion of the Canadian welfare state was part of a shift away from a political economy organized around warfare. As Whitaker has argued, ‘Military Keynesianism could not be sustained in Canada much past the end of the Korean War, and by the late 1950s and early 1960s gave way to more of a welfare than warfare state. With the decline in military spending, the regional integration characteristic of the U.S. experience was less in evidence, leading to greater regional disparities and more overt politicization of regional antagonisms’ (2004:37). But what would be the implications of this shift for the institution responsible for warfare and for the status of warriors? Military recruiters were increasingly aware that these developments in civilian welfare and labour regulation posed a serious obstacle to drawing in new personnel. They drew direct connections between the introduction of civilian entitlement and the fading appeal of military work. One 1964 field report from the army’s Eastern Command to Canadian Forces Headquarters reported: As recently as three years ago it was not necessary to ‘sell’ the Canadian Army, it sold itself. Pay was high in relation to civilian wages; security was apparent related to Civilian Social Services, and service overseas particularly in Germany offered certain financial benefits due to favourable exchange rates. These benefits no longer exist. Minimum wage legislation and industries wage scales are competitive with services pay in the junior ranks; the proposed introduction of the Federal Pension Plan detracts to some degree from the value of the services pension, and services overseas is no longer such an attraction due to the discount of the dollar.50
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The author makes some attempt to strategize around this emerging reality, but does so by opting into the same logic. For example, he recommends publicizing the benefits of military careers that were still specialized and not available to the broader civilian population. ‘The “soft sell” of the Canadian Army advertising in this competitive manpower situation is not realistic,’ he writes. ‘The term “good pay” [does not] attract the recruit, it is too vague, every advertisement offers ”good pay.” It is suggested that the dollars and cents benefits should perhaps receive more play, for example, how much is free dental and medical care worth; what other “job” offers you an increase in pay when you get married; where else can you get thirty days paid holiday in a year.’51 In addition to the growth of the civilian welfare state, the memo identifies another serious and related obstacle for military recruitment. The general rise of wage rates across the country by default lowered the relative worth of a stable military salary. While the impacts of changing labour relations in Canada were only severe enough to directly impact military recruitment starting in the mid-1960s, much of the legislation enabling these shifts was actually engineered during wartime. It was a Conservative judge, Charles McTague, who released report P.C. 1003 in response to the major strikes of 1943. P.C. 1003 established the framework of industrial relations for the next two generations.52 Thus, shifts in the political and economic governance that responded to wartime labour struggles would eventually have such deep and wide-ranging impacts on labour relations in Canada that recruiting national war workers twenty years later would become an enormous challenge. The military could no longer offer many distinct benefits to enlistment or a relatively high wage for workers, and subsequently the number and quality of applicants rapidly declined. The military started to experience perennial problems of recruitment and retention at this time. In response, it began to lower enlistment standards and accept applicants with lower and lower test scores. For instance, in the early 1960s the army began to lower ‘M score’ requirements, the testing system used to select and place personnel. From a previous acceptance score of 140, the score for admittance was lowered to 115 and then eventually 105. Out of desperation, the army finally made the lower standards retroactive; applicants who had scored above these reduced cut-offs and who had been previously rejected were contacted and offered positions. The growing urgency of the recruiting challenges was also showing itself in recruiters’ increasingly urgent demands for more effective advertising materials in the
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early 1960s.53 Recruiting units from across the country complained that advertising materials were both out of date and regionally inappropriate. They reported problems meeting quotas and requested more financial and institutional support to meet those quotas. By the early 1970s quotas were perennially unmet, and 51 per cent of applicants were unemployed compared with just 7.4 per cent of the national average (CFPARU 1974b). Other all-volunteer militaries, such as the United Kingdom’s, were reporting similar trends, and the United States began registering these same concerns almost immediately after conscription was terminated in 1973 (Newman 1976). At the same time, a growing sense of personnel dissatisfaction was also becoming a more acute problem within the military. Soldiers gave voice to their frustrations, generally through attrition, but also on occasion through public declarations of their grievances. The following letter to the editor from a disgruntled ex-serviceman appeared in the Toronto Star in January 1965 and generated a mild panic in CF personnel offices: Don’t Enlist Boys; get better prospects picking fruit Millions of dollars are to be spent to bring the Canadian Forces up-todate. How can they expect to run all the complicated electronic equipment when the navy has to keep ships in port with reduced crews because they are short seamen because they can’t pay proper wages? The other two services have the same problem. If the government would give me back my youth, I would gladly give them back my pension. When I got out I realized what I could have done during all those wasted years without regular promotions or wage increases. How could I have been such a fool? Now I have a good paying job selling real estate. On occasion, I have lost a sale because NHA won’t approve a loan to a junior rank in the armed services. He doesn’t make enough money. Yet we send him to Cyprus to be shot at. How many people have to put their children in four different schools in 18 months? I had to do this, when I was in the service. The government doesn’t replace furniture that gets worn out on the moves from Winnipeg to Vancouver. How many people have had to try and sell a house over the phone 1,500 miles away in January? With a pregnant wife to boot. Then the move, without a car, with the temperature 37 below? This is the armed service, folks. I have yet to see any other organization that has so many people who can make so many wrong decisions at the
Post-War Citizenship: Mass and Militarized 123 same time. Lots of them are costly, but only the big ones get published … Young men looking for a promising future can do better picking up paper in the CNE grounds in Toronto, or picking fruit in Leamington. K. McLeod, Toronto
The military documented growing levels of discontent among personnel but also, importantly, among their wives. The benefits of a career in the military were becoming more difficult to discern with the rapid relative decline in the desirability of service life in relation to civilian work. Military wives started to complain. Their complaints became a serious issue for military planners because they directly affected personnel retention rates. As wives became increasingly impatient with the military, their husbands began to drop out and seek civilian careers. One CF memo from the time warns that the effect of military policy on soldiers’ wives ‘should not be discounted.’ In a context of heightened UN deployments, ‘many NCOs and men are going on their 2nd or 3rd “unaccompanied” tour overseas. As strengths are cut and policing duties increase or appear to the average soldier’s wife to be semi-permanent, she persuades her husband to leave the army rather than enter another period of separation.’54 The growing frustration of military wives was an important contributing factor in the initiation of a body of military-funded sociological research in the United States, and to some extent in Canada and Britain. This research initiated a field of knowledge that would later generate an entire infrastructure of family and spousal support programs and systems in these militaries (Harrison and Laliberté 1994). At the same time, as new as the particular concerns for the military wife and family were at this point in time, the family as a domain of military intervention and welfare was also part of a long-standing and paternalistic legacy of ‘dependents’ support’ and family policy, first engineered in the military.
4 The Urban, the Educated, and the Recruitment Crisis
In 1956 when I joined … it was a matter of pride to belong to the military. (Belak 1978)1 The role and the cultural context of [military] employment is noxious to most ‘thinking,’ twentieth century people. (Cotton 2004)
Recruitment problems were perennial and severe by the late 1960s. And yet, while they were increasingly acute they were not entirely new to the military. Since the initiation of a standing all-volunteer force after the Second World War, personnel shortages were a regular challenge. Coordinating the swings of foreign affairs and defence policy with domestic labour markets is a complicated balancing act unique to voluntary-service national militaries. Major movement on either the global or domestic side can undermine the elasticity of personnel strength. And yet, the image of ‘sides’ is utterly inadequate and perhaps misleading; despite the national border there is no clear line or secure wall between these spheres in practice. Even with strong national regulation of social and economic life, the domestic is never immune to, or entirely distinct from, international political economy, as the figure of the migrant worker reminds us (Sharma 2006). The cyclical effects of the capitalist economy have repeatedly resulted in periods of national economic growth with low unemployment levels, generating military recruitment shortages. At the time of the Cold War military expansion, the labour market was experiencing these tight conditions associated with national economic growth. Thus the buildup of forces at this time ‘revived Canada’s most durable military problem, manpower’ (Morton 1990:238–9; emphasis in original).
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By the mid-1960s new obstacles began to interfere with recruitment. In addition to cyclical swings in the economy, the military encountered the challenge of structural labour market change. With fundamental changes to Canada’s system of capitalist (re)production through the growth of the welfare state and expansion of workers’ wages, the military’s leverage in the labour market gradually gave way. The bundle of material and symbolic goods that once provided the armed forces with a steady flow of recruits was no longer effective in this context. In addition to the decline of war work as a competitive career option, military researchers would document related change in the cultural, economic, and social geography of Canadians and, specifically, shifts in the nature of work and in the identities, desires, and geographies of workers. Most important, workers were becoming more educated, urban, and mobile, and far less interested in the static discipline of the armed forces. The recasting of governmentalities and political economies of work and welfare in the two decades after the Second World War had a direct impact on military recruitment. It created a crisis that would remain a permanent feature of military manpower management for decades to come. In this chapter I explore the changing role and organization of social research within the Department of National Defence and examine the way that new knowledge about the population changed the practice of military recruitment in the 1970s and 1980s. From the early 1970s, military officials were demanding a greater amount and sophistication of information about the population to help them predict and so respond more effectively to labour market dynamics. This desire for more useful information provoked a major intellectual retooling within the institution. Problems with the recruitment and retention of qualified personnel seemed regular and widespread, and the individual psychology approaches that had long dominated personnel research were unable to provide useful explanations. As researchers increasingly sought collective social explanations, the military came to rely on macro sociological research and geographical analysis. This research presented a stark picture of the future of recruitment, which suggested that Canada’s changing human geography was at the centre of their concerns. Drawing on internal research reports and the archives of the military’s research office, I trace the emerging consensus about the economic and cultural geographies of the recruitment crisis during this period. Military researchers, who increasingly conceptualized the military ‘inside’ the economy but ‘outside’ of society, came to see the recruitment crisis as a casualty of the urbanization and professionalization of
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Canadian work and workers. The city and its citizens became the central problem and potential solution to the crisis of ‘military manpower.’ Preparing for Future War The 1960s saw a complete reordering of the nature and scale of social research carried out in the military. During the war, the army, navy, and air force had generally collaborated through tri-service personnel committees to coordinate men’s recruitment and personnel selection.2 The bulk of this work was done separately by each service and was geared to the immediate needs of war rather than long-term institution building. Following a brief demobilization immediately after the Second World War, all three services reinstated personnel research units by the early 1950s. Research and planning were becoming more and more important tools for military managers. In the context of a standing voluntary military, knowledge about personnel and the broader population became a critical technology in the struggle for qualified recruits. While the very same officers were employed in these research offices during and after the war, their task was utterly new. In the post-war period personnel research was responsible for building a permanent peacetime military body, instead of a mass force for a temporary and exceptional event. The research offices thus became increasingly dependent on careful planning, on more sophisticated management methods, and on the extensive collection of new population data in order to facilitate the recruitment, retention, and training of personnel. In this way, the military aimed to ensure that a lack of preparedness that had created recruitment problems during the war would not repeat in the future. As one air force memo explained, ‘The time-lag which allowed appointment of personnel research specialists and their familiarization with RCAF problems of personnel production during World War II is not expected in World War III.’3 Military planners would ensure that a future transition from peace to war would be seamless, and a solid research program would make that goal possible. In fact, as this quotation and broader discussions in the military archives indicate, a key part of making future wars manageable was to anticipate them. The Third World War would not come as a surprise or take planners off guard; it was simply a future event for which the military must prepare. The growing desire to predict human behaviour with the goal of abolishing uncertainty
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was a means of ensuring efficient operation in future battle, but it also blurred the lines between war and peace. In extending its domestic activities, the military’s studies of the population also blurred the border as the limit line of military jurisdiction. Military research was thus fuelled by the biopolitical tension of studying and supporting populations, as preparation for the possibility of sending them to kill and die. Knowledge about the population was becoming a more valuable tool with the creation of the professional military. However, during the early part of the Cold War and through the 1950s the administration of personnel research and recruitment was practised separately in the three services. Tri-service planning meetings were regular but occasional events during this time. Research strategies were largely uncoordinated between services and entirely geared to understanding individual and micro organizational psychology. The uncoordinated nature of research within the services meant that research projects were disconnected and repetitive. The focus on individual psychology provided little insight on the building recruitment crisis. The organization, methodology, and substantive focus of military personnel research in the early Cold War was thus poorly equipped to answer the questions of recruiters and recruitment policy makers in a context of rapid social change. In 1964 the government initiated a controversial unification of the three services of the armed forces, in large part in response to the kinds of planning and organization challenges that were emerging in the area of personnel research. With unification, the services’ research units were centralized so knowledge production could be more effectively coordinated. In fact, an entirely new research institution was formed, the Canadian Forces Personnel Applied Research Unit (CFPARU), which initially operated out of Toronto. Under the auspices and management of the ‘Personnel Selection Branch,’ the CFPARU operated with a research staff that fluctuated from fourteen to thirty members. Officers from within the military who showed intellectual promise were selected for a career in personnel research and often supported through PhD sociology programs in civilian universities. On occasion, CFPARU staff worked in collaboration with independent academic investigators and non-governmental institutions, a practice that became increasingly commonplace in later decades.4 The creation of the CFPARU was a momentous event, marking the beginning of the systematization and intensification of the production of knowledge
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about the population in the Canadian military. While the substantive focus of research on individual psychology and micro sociology persisted for several years after, the practice of research became increasingly coordinated through the work of the CFPARU. By the early 1970s the recruitment crisis was exceeding the military’s capacity to respond. Application and enlistment numbers were dangerously low and dropping. The situation threatened military operational effectiveness and called for a serious response. This military battle was fought, not with guns or soldiers, but with sociological and, eventually, geographical analysis. In 1973 the CFPARU adopted a new strategy in the military’s war against obsolescence; researchers would study the macro social and economic transformations taking part in Canada so they might organize a tactical response. The military conceptualized the recruitment crisis as a battle. The language of conquest, of ‘penetrating’ and ‘targeting’ populations, framed and guided its actions, to the point where the domestic population was increasingly conceptualized as something akin to an enemy. The shift from a research agenda devoted to individual psychology to one geared towards macro sociological inquiry occurred as a direct result of the magnitude and structural nature of the recruiting crisis (Cotton 2004; Pinch 2004). Citizens, applicants, recruits, and personnel were eluding expectations; when researchers could no longer explain behaviour they began to shift their questions and paradigms (Cotton 2004). A few researchers within the CFPARU began to pursue analysis at the scale of the national socius in order to contextualize the changes that local recruitment offices encountered. Some of the broad contours of problems were already clear to the military, such as the rise in civilian wage rates and expansion of civilian welfare that I outlined in the last chapter, but researchers wanted to understand the more subtle and specific implications of these shifts in the political-economic and cultural lives of Canadians so they could respond with better policies. The CF was in search of reliable predictions of social change in order to develop a long-term recruitment strategy. In addition to an analysis of national social and economic change, the research unit would seek out information of a much more intimate nature. What were young Canadian men thinking and feeling? What desires governed their career choices? How were they making decisions about their futures? What openings were there for the military to influence outcomes? These questions would shape the CFPARU research agenda for the crucial decade to come.
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Defining the Crisis: A Whole New Recruit? In one of its earliest reports, the CFPARU tried to define the recruitment challenges that motivated its work. ‘In recent years,’ the CFPARU (1974a:2) writes, ‘there have been indications that fundamental changes have occurred in the size and nature of the traditional market for unskilled manpower.’ No longer were short-term policy changes, such as ‘making military pay more attractive,’ improving the ‘net inflow of recruits’; rather, the CFPARU suggests that ‘current recruiting problems may be linked to shifts in the socio-demographic composition of the potential market; a possibility borne out in a recent American study.’ Indeed, communication between military researchers in different countries documenting similar challenges made it clear that the changes taking place in Canada were actually transnational in nature. Information sharing took place through military research and intelligence networks at NATO and through the Technical Cooperation Program,5 where Canada would distinguish itself as an innovative actor in personnel policy (Pinch 2004). The supranational nature of change prompted the CFPARU to look to ‘external factors’ – by which it meant factors in society and ‘outside’ the military (CFPARU 1975b). More specifically, the CFPARU saw its challenges emerging out of growing dissonance between military and civilian worlds. In response, researchers made various attempts to model ‘military-society relations’ and did so in ways reminiscent of Clausewitz and Huntington. The model from 1975, shown in Plate 4.1, presents a picture of a military ‘outside’ of society, which then ‘relates’ back to it. The military, and therefore the soldier, exists in a kind of supra-social and political realm rather than as a constituent element of the polity and society. While the CFPARU’s dominant conception of ‘military-society relations’ in the 1970s posited the military outside society, interestingly, the military was within the bounds of the economy. The military was conceptualized in economic terms, as an actor within a competitive labour market. ‘As with the vast majority of military organizations throughout history,’ researchers asserted that the Canadian Forces ‘depends on its host society for human resources.’ But the combination of a professionalized and voluntary military meant that ‘the role of personnel practices and career development policies’ was ‘a particularly crucial one. Not only must they be consonant with a rather unique set of operational requirements, they must also be compatible with accepted and expected practices in the labour market and with general social trends
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Plate 4.1 ‘Military-Society Relations’ Source: Canadian Forces Personnel Applied Research Unit 1975b:9.
in society’ (CFPARU 1975b:2). Bracketing the political dimensions of military work in favour of an economic conception of the soldier, they suggest that ‘the Canadian Forces can be usefully viewed as a major employment option in a competitive labour market.’
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An economic model of military service became dominant in the U.S. context around the same time. In fact, Segal (1989:38) explains that the entire blueprint for the all-volunteer U.S. military force set out by the Gates Commission in 1970 ‘was rooted in economic behavior.’ As I have argued elsewhere, this economic model of military service was a direct result of the emergence of cost-benefit analysis in the U.S. Department of Defense and the work of its proponents and logics in reconfiguring the broad terrain of politics and citizenship. Cost-benefit analysis was adopted in an ever-expanding range of contexts as a means of assessing political choices. But it was the unique challenge of managing military service – which cannot be fully marketized in a geopolitical world order – that played a crucial role in the design and dispersal of early neoliberal political rationalities (Cowen 2006). Conflicts between the geopolitical logic of the territorial nation state as a nexus of political obligation and social entitlement, and a geoeconomic logic of relational global space of marketized citizenship, are perhaps nowhere more acute than in the military (Cowen and Smith 2006). With these foundational assumptions about the economic role and identity of the military, the CFPARU provided a cutting picture of the recruiting problem. It launched a major critique of assumptions that had defined CF policy since the Second World War: Commonly-held assumptions about the nature of the potential unskilled recruit market provide a useful point of departure in discussing changes. These assumptions are evident in conversations about problems of recruitment and career retention, albeit with decreasing frequency, and to a large extent they have provided the premises upon which personnel policies have been based over the past two decades. Briefly, the four main assumptions appear to be: a. that there is an abundant supply of potential recruits available in Canadian society, and that recruiting quotas can be met through a combination of aggressive recruiting and the appropriate message to attract applicants; b. that the great majority of recruits are high school dropouts with a grade 8, 9 or 10 education; c. that a military career represents a secure and somewhat unique employment opportunity for such individuals who would otherwise have few chances for stable employment in the labour market; and d. that potential recruits with such educational levels are adequately equipped, both socially and intellectually, for the demands of training
132 Military Workfare and employment in the Canadian Forces, ie, that the person with a grade 10 education or less is generally good Forces material. The assumptions listed above derive from an image of Canadian society in the 1950s and early 1960s, and are borne out by past experience. In other words, they reflect the general socio-demographic patterns which held in Canada during the two decades after 1945. (CFPARU 1974a:13)
The CFPARU began to document the effects of social change on recruitment by tracking key variables. Its 1974 report outlined characteristics of ‘actual recruits between 1968 and 1973.’ The report shows that beyond a general decline in numbers of applicants, a more specific decline in applicants with each increase in education level was under way. Increasingly, it was men with lower levels of education who constituted the applicant base. The report also tracked a related decline in the number of applicants with every increase in age (with 18 being the peak), and a general decline in application and enrolment of older age groups (CFPARU 1974a:42). The military began to compare changes in the age and education levels of recruits with the broader population, drawing on census information and population projections. Researchers became increasingly alarmed. ‘The fact that application and enrolment rates remained extremely small in spite of the fact that quotas were high and the Forces were in an aggressive recruiting stance suggests cause for concern,’ the CFPARU warned. ‘Should these rates of application and enrolment be the norm over the next decade, the possibility of perennial shortfalls cannot be dismissed lightly’ (1974a:44). Provoking any preliminary interest in the military among young men was a growing challenge; moreover, a growing proportion of men who initiated applications were stopping short of actually enrolling. Application and subsequent non-enrolment had previously been a rare occurrence; however, 50 per cent of applicants were failing to enrol by the mid-1970s (CFPARU 1975b:3). This saw enrolment levels drop and made recruitment costs soar. Personnel ‘selection’ was fast becoming a heavily outdated and much too casual conception of recruiters’ work. Personnel would no longer simply be selected from a willing pool of applicants. Increasingly, personnel would have to be tracked down, approached with caution, courted, and lured into the institution. A striking feature of early CFPARU analysis is the way it characterizes the shifting nature of recruitment by profiling the emergence of a new kind of recruit. Because of the very practical desire to intervene in young people’s on-the-ground decision making, the CFPARU aimed to
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understand how change at the scale of the socius worked through social actors. The CFPARU was convinced that ‘the pace of change in Canadian society has been accelerating since the Second World War,’ and it oriented its investigations towards understanding what national political and economic change meant for individual actors. How did these shifts calibrate? In the mid-1970s the CFPARU began describing how the ‘the young recruit of today differs greatly from his or her counterpart from the 1950s’ (1975b:A-3). In this way the CFPARU became concerned with the changing nature of subjectivity and identity among members of the recruit population. Studying Soldiers and Citizens For two decades the CFPARU would collect data on recruitment trends in Canada and provide analysis and recommendations for recruitment policy. The more research it conducted, the more it found that more research was needed. Initial questions continually sparked new ones, and there was a sense that eventually, with enough information, it might manoeuvre its way out of trouble. The CFPARU’s 1974 report, ‘Unskilled Male Recruits for the Canadian Forces: Trends and Projections to 1985,’ was the first to systematically examine the relationship of CF recruiting problems to broad social change in Canada. It suggests that the lack of existing data around these questions created a firm limit on the efficacy of the military’s applied recruiting work. In addition to broad limitations in relevant data, the report also points to some particular information gaps: The report is not without limitations of a methodological, substantive or explanatory nature … it should not be construed as an exhaustive descriptive treatment of the problems in manpower supply. It only deals with secondary data, as limitations in resources and time precluded the generation of new data, even when important gaps were identified. Specific examples were the unavailability of empirical data on the ethnic origins and employment background of actual applicants and enrollees since 1968. In both instances, population estimates for the relevant age groups in Canada were available and the literature suggested that patterns of military participation were likely to vary along these dimensions; however, it proved impossible to generate the required data. (CFPARU 1974a:4)
A whole series of research reports followed this one, stretching into the 1990s, and eventually generating a large body of instrumental
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knowledge. The CFPARU investigated and reported on topics ranging from unskilled male labour, ethnic diversity, immigrant recruitment, job satisfaction, recruit quality, and so on. In an early report it discusses the need for this mass of information. It describes how ‘severe variations in the type and quality of recruits to different occupational areas may generate problems’ of ‘perennially high turnover, an inadequate number of other ranks with officer potential, or recruiting shortfalls when changing conditions in society remove traditional sources of recruits’ (CFPARU 1975b:A-2). ‘In the long term,’ it argues, ‘Forces’ hiring practices and career fields must be in step with trends in the quality and size of the Canadian labour market.’ Not surprisingly, it sees an urgent need for ‘information on those trends and how they influence the characteristics of people entering the various Forces’ career fields.’ Researchers saw enormous potential for their own work. The CFPARU called for research that would track applicants more frequently, and throughout the enrolment and training process. The CFPARU (1975b:11) asserted that it was ‘clearly in the Forces’ interest to gain a broad understanding of the factors which account for differences in the completion rate,’ seeing as a ‘systematic examination of early career variables … can provide information about the individual characteristics associated with success in the crucial first stages of a military career, indicating good and poor “bets” for enrolment.’ Its goal was to isolate as many relevant variables as possible to allow the military to pinpoint who to recruit and how: ‘It may be that a certain category of individual is relatively easy to recruit … but also reveals a very high wastage rate in early training … Conversely, another category may participate less frequently but stay longer. The implications of recruiting each type can only be understood if individuals are followed up.’ The military began to rely so heavily on information about applicants, recruits, and the broader population that intermittent reports were no longer sufficient. It devised a method of tracking recruits continually throughout the enlistment process and comparing this data to trends in the potential applicant population. Starting with periodic surveys of applicants, such as the CFPARU Applicant Survey in 1975, it eventually instituted a permanent monitoring system in the late 1980s after two tumultuous decades of recruitment challenges. The ‘Canadian Forces Applicant Profile Questionnaire’ (CFAPQ) was implemented in 1987 and then restructured regularly. It became increasingly sophisticated in the range of variables it collected but was eventually replaced with the Canadian Forces Contact Survey (CFCS). The CFCS cast its net wide. No longer confined to the study of the population
The Urban, the Educated, and the Recruitment Crisis 135
that actually applied to the military, the CFCS was an anonymous survey of every individual who expressed any interest in the CF. Individuals who merely stopped into a recruiting office, chatted with a recruiter, or wrote for information about the CF were subjects of study. The Rise of Educated, Mobile, and Professional Workers Today, for the first time in history, less than half the people between 16 and 21 are full-time members of the labour force. Furthermore of those between 21 and 25, almost 25 percent, an unprecedented figure, are still in school. This has emerged in the last ten years and represents one of the most major social developments of the years since World War II. (Flacks 1971, quoted in CFPARU 1974a:1) Almost as dramatic as the decline and fall of the peasantry, and much more universal, was the rise of the occupations which required secondary and higher education. (Hobsbawm 1994:295)
With all its research, it quickly became clear to the CFPARU that there was one factor playing a central role in reshaping both the Canadian labour force and the military recruitment base: education. Rising education levels among young people were documented by sociologists, labour ministries, and cultural commentators in Canada and internationally. It was a striking feature of the reshaping of work and workers across Western capitalist nations. The timing of this expansion of education was, not coincidentally, tied to war. This expansion was certainly under way before the Second World War in industrialized nations, but after the war, education and educational institutions ballooned at an entirely new pace and scale. Even during the war, the growth of industry and the specialization of work had prompted the extension of training and education for workers. Importantly, education also became one of the benefits offered to veterans after war; it was both a reward for service and a means of preventing mass unemployment among returning personnel. Training benefits kept large numbers of veterans out of the labour force for several years and sent 150,000 to university and 130,000 to vocational training programs (Morton 1990:227). Countless reports from various institutions in this era describe the rising education levels among youth, but the practical and urgent nature of the military’s interest in these trends makes its perspective both unique and revealing. The military had a vested interest in the fate of higher education in society, as it relied on a steady stream of
136 Military Workfare Figure 4.1 Canadian School Leavers in Thousands, Actual and Projected, 1957–1977 400
Thousands Leaving School
350 300 250 grades 8, 9, 10 grades 11, 12
200 150 100 50 0 1957
1960
1963
1966
1969
1973
1977
Year
Source: Canadian Forces Personnel Applied Research Unit 1974a:32.
‘unskilled’ workers to fill its ranks. ‘Unskilled’ male labour generally accounted for 85 per cent of CF personnel, and the male high school dropout was its main source. For the most part, unskilled workers provided a sufficient base for new recruits in the post-war decades, but by the 1970s this was no longer the case. In fact, in its first report, the CFPARU outlines a complete restructuring of young people’s work and education patterns. ‘The educational revolution,’ the CFPARU argues, ‘has had a marked effect on the educational characteristics of potential recruits’ (1974a:6). Most notably, ‘the percentage of school leavers with grade 10 or less has dropped drastically since 1951, and the grade 8 “dropout” has in effect become a statistical rarity in Canada.’ The report outlines the expansion of schooling of Canadian youth since 1957, and projects its continued growth until 1980. Its graph, reproduced in Figure 4.1, shows a dramatic decline in dropouts for grades 8 to 10 and a subsequent rise in dropouts for higher grades. ‘Throughout the next decade,’ the CFPARU claims, ‘the vast majority of potential recruits will have completed a secondary school diploma or be within one or two years of its completion.’
The Urban, the Educated, and the Recruitment Crisis 137 Table 4.1 Student Retention to Last Year of High School for Canada and Provinces, 1965–6 and 1970–1 1965–66
1970–71
CANADA
69%
75%
NFLD
46%
64%
PEI
42%
58%
NS
62%
72%
NB
42%
58%
QUE
61%
81%
ONT
58%
71%
MAN
60%
72%
SASK
67%
75%
ALTA
86%
89%
BC
68%
78%
Interpretation This table shows that there was a significant increase between 1965 and 1971 in the percentage of students staying in school until the last year of high school. This means that the drop-out rate decreased in that period, and thus that the traditional unskilled recruit market decreased in size. Source: Canadian Forces Personnel Applied Research Unit 1974a:30.
The CFPARU documented the rapid and recent nature of these shifts. Despite variations between the provinces, there was a significant jump across the country in the level of high school retention between 1965–6 and 1970–1 (see Table 4.1). The report further notes that education cut across region and language group as the most distinctive differentiating characteristic for recruits. With the important exception of gender – which does not appear as a variable in early analyses – education level was the primary ground of labour market stratification at this time among young Canadians. The military’s interest in this dramatic reshaping of the labour force was actually twofold. The first issue was indeed the growing challenge of recruiting the ‘unskilled’ young men that remained the staple of its workforce. However, the CF was also developing an interest in the growing group of more educated young men. Changing technologies of warfare gradually increased the need for recruits with technical skills. The evolution of machines of war and their impacts on the
138 Military Workfare Table 4.2 Percentage of CF Personnel or Enrollees at Various Education Levels Compared to Population Percentages, 1975–1986 Year
Education Level Non–High School Grad CF
1975
81%
1976 1980
1986*
CF
Cdn Pop
17% 44%
60%
1981 1982
Cdn Pop
High School Grad
48%
CF
Cdn Pop
2% 20%
29% 42%
Post Sec & Univ
36% 11%
21%
37%
52% 39%
19%
42%
* Projected Source: Canadian Forces Personnel Applied Research Unit 1985:3.
organization of life beyond the battlefield has been a long-term historical process under way for millennia (Molas-Gallart 2001; Farrell and Terriff 2002; Hirst 2002), but one that is continually ‘speeding up’ (cf. Virilio 1977). Particularly after the Second World War, military technology became much more complex, and warfare increasingly relied on computers and a machines, rather than the brute force of masses of human bodies. The importance of air power in the post-war period was both an indication and a cause of the added need for technological skill in the militaries of Western nations. In this context, and in the highly instrumental language of capitalist biopolitics, the CFPARU explained, ‘According to current standards the more educated recruit is, statistically speaking, recognized as a more valuable commodity’ (1974a:48). For the CF, exploiting the cultural and psychological characteristics associated with more educated recruits became as important as exploiting any tangible skill set. CFPARU research was making statistical correlations between recruits with higher levels of education, improved performance on the job, and an enhanced ability to learn new skills. Performance levels were particularly important given that, at the time these reports were being written in the early 1970s, close to 50 per cent of new recruits could not even pass a course of basic training (CFPARU 1974a). The high cost of training and indoctrination for failed recruits made the budget needs for military human resources soar and contributed significantly to the recruitment crisis. This desire
The Urban, the Educated, and the Recruitment Crisis 139
to recruit more capable applicants created serious challenges for an already-strained military. More educated young people were becoming both more attractive to the CF and a larger segment of the labour force; however, these same people ‘whom the Canadian Forces find most attractive are most likely to find the military unattractive as a career option’ (CFPARU 1974a:6–7). Researchers predicted that this dynamic would have severe consequences for recruitment. Research reports from later years confirm the extent to which the CF would struggle unsuccessfully to recruit more educated youth. Education levels among personnel were slowly rising, as Table 4.2 reveals, but the gap between these men and Canadian averages loomed large. Shifting Cultures of Work and Emerging Economic Subjects The broad cultural shifts associated with the rising levels of more educated workers became a preoccupation of military researchers. This was a result of the conviction that it was the appeal of the military that was waning, rather than a simple decline in the population of young Canadians or a lack of awareness of military career options. Either of these situations would have clear contours and could prompt definite responses. Instead, the CFPARU was learning that what was taking place was something much more complex and perhaps even elusive to the standard categories of social scientific inquiry. A broad transformation was under way in the desires and ambitions of young people as a dimension of these educational and economic changes. Without clear recourse, researchers began tracking the habits, practices, and desires of youth. As the opening pages of an early research report explain: The perception of major socio-demographic shifts in the potential recruit population has been reinforced by indicators of change in the behaviour, values, and career expectations of younger servicemen. Unscheduled attrition of well-educated enrollees, an apparent intolerance for aspects of military service and career policies long considered non-negotiable, and pressures for expanded benefits represent three such indicators. Issues such as these have been identified in other western nations and in conjunction with the highly competitive recruiting climate and their underlying assumptions. (CFPARU 1974a:1)
The CF would document changing cultures of work in Canada, identifying a range of characteristics associated with rising levels of education. Increasing mobility and individualism in career and life
140 Military Workfare
choices were central elements of emerging work cultures and worker subjectivities. Entrepreneurial and independent, the new worker was a prized (even if peculiar) commodity but was also understood to be a fast-moving target. This young and educated agent would have knowledge, drive, as well as the skills and resources to attain even more knowledge. ‘He’ would be on the lookout for his own interests and have a clear sense of what those interests were. He would be an active economic subject with the aim of self-maximization: The more educated youth in the potential recruit market is likely to have more opportunities available to him before and after enrolment in the Canadian Forces. In addition, and this is critical, his knowledge of these opportunities is likely to be higher than that of lower educated individuals, due in part, to his wider exposure to occupational options in the educational system. Finally, he has acquired through participation in a market-oriented educational system, a tendency to critically evaluate the opportunities in terms of his interests and background, and to control his movement through the job market in pursuit of more rewards. Typically, for example, he has more knowledge of how to get the job he wants, including a knowledge of a greater number of job-finding methods. In sum, the more educated youth is typically a more sophisticated participant in the labour market, one who is always assessing available opportunities; who knows how to manipulate those opportunities to his advantage, and is willing to do so. (CFPARU 1974a:34)
This educated worker would have his sights set on the most competitive opportunities that could afford him transferable skills and flexible choices. Thus, assuming the military could recruit him in the first place, a subsequent challenge would be encouraging him to stay. Indeed, welleducated recruits were largely responsible for rising rates of attrition (CFPARU 1975c:1–2). In his pursuit of more knowledge and money, the loyalties of the more educated recruit would be unwavering, but his loyalties would be to his own advancement rather than to a single firm, institution, or even nation. The new economic subject was fast acting and self-interested, and it was increasingly clear that he was not well suited to a military future. In an extraordinary profile of this emergent worker, worth quoting at some length, the CFPARU would notice that the new economic subject was also, specifically, a less-militarist citizen: In terms of expectations, he tends also to be more critical of the benefits and drawbacks of prospective employment settings; a characteristic
The Urban, the Educated, and the Recruitment Crisis 141 which is linked to the fact of greater opportunity. He is, for example, less likely to be undecided about a field of employment than his less educated counterpart. In this vein, he is also more likely to recognize the instrumental value of a marketable skill to a successful career in an employment field, and consequently he tends to critically evaluate employment prospectives by the degree to which they offer marketable skills and experience. In addition, he has several expectations about job characteristics which shape his perception of the relative attractiveness of a job. He expects challenging work; a finding which is consistently reported in surveys, including those within the Canadian Forces, and becomes dissatisfied more quickly than his less educated counterpart when it is not forthcoming. He further expects advancement at a rate which may be inconsistent with his skills and experience; a result of his perception of the importance of education per se to career success. He also tends to make a sharp distinction between work and non-work activities, and resists employer interference in his personal life. In a similar vein, he tends to reject traditional inclusive authority patterns and status arrangements, maintaining an egalitarian viewpoint on relationships and personnel practices not specifically related to job tasks. Finally, he tends to recognize the value of education and seeks to upgrade himself academically, and can be expected to critically evaluate the opportunities available in a given job for such upgrading. (CFPARU 1974a:34)
These trends were clearly at odds with military work. How exactly could a sharp line be drawn between work and non-work activities in a total institution where your neighbours are also your colleagues? How could ‘employer interference in private life’ possibly be avoided when home is literally the national space of a military base, or when your employer is also your landlord? Is it conceivable that the military could foster ‘an egalitarian viewpoint’ when the fundamental organizing principles of the institution are disciplinary and hierarchical? The CF (CFPARU 1974a:35) would start to think through these kinds of questions in the coming years in a desperate attempt to appeal to young Canadians, but it was clear that things did not bode well for recruitment. ‘The person described in the paragraphs above fits neatly into civilian industrial patterns,’ the CFPARU would note, though ‘these characteristics may not articulate well with traditional military recruiting and career practices.’ The CF embarked on initiatives that aimed to reform the fundamentally hierarchical nature of military occupational structure, for example, with initiatives to improve military ‘Quality of Working Life,’ as the following chapter will show. And yet, core features of
142 Military Workfare
workplace discipline and hierarchy not only have their source in the military but are also essential to its continued operation. This research produced another set of concerns about the growing complexity of social class. With the widespread growth of education levels, the CF pondered whether the practical and cultural indicators of class might actually be flattening, converging, or even disappearing. This was a serious worry given that class structures military hierarchy, sorting applicants into the officer or non-commissioned member (NCM) streams. Analysis of educational data ‘suggests movement towards a more educated NCM population which may ultimately result in a blurring of the educational distinction that has traditionally marked the difference between NCM and officer cohorts’ (CFPARU 1989:31). In other words, the convergence of educational levels ‘may make it difficult to discriminate between the two groups.’ However, upon further investigation it became clear that there was ‘little evidence that convergence was occurring on other dimensions, and that the Canadian Forces will encounter little difficulty discriminating between the two groups during the recruiting phase’ (CFPARU 1989:31). Thus, initial concerns were allayed – ‘class difference’ could still be easily read-off factors such as ‘social suitability’ and ‘intellectual ability,’ even while education levels were becoming more even. Military Labour Geographies A survey of the geographic origins of military personnel gives the truest picture one can have of the Forces’ social recruitment. (Coulombe 1972)
Long before the initiation of the CFPARU, CF staff understood that recruitment patterns varied from place to place, but this knowledge was anecdotal and had not been scrutinized by any systematic comparison of facts and figures. Until recruiting became an arena of constant problems, the military largely neglected questions of human geography. But things changed when recruiting problems took on crisis proportions. Early and casual observations regarding the geographical unevenness of recruitment patterns were quickly confirmed, and the spatial dimensions of recruitment became subject to detailed investigation. Geography would start off as a descriptive theme of analysis, and would become a key explanatory tool in the observed transformations of economy and society. Geography was understood as more than a simple axis or variable with which to measure variations in
The Urban, the Educated, and the Recruitment Crisis 143
applicant patterns. It was only through an understanding of regional economic geography that a profile of the production and reproduction of subjects emerged. The CFPARU (1975c:52) identified a basic geographical dimension to recruitment in one of its earliest reports. It describes the ‘most striking relationship’ as being the variance in recruit levels in different parts of the country. More specifically, it found that the ‘ratios of applicants and enrollees to males available increases from east to west. In other words, the Maritimes produce applicants and enrollees disproportionately to the number of males available in that region, and that “productivity” declines as we move east to west.’ Further investigation of these themes led the military to make connections between the socio-economic and cultural changes in the labour force, and their respective geographies. In a study designed to address questions of regional disparities in recruitment, the CFPARU contrasts the political and cultural economies of two provinces and analyses these in relation to recruitment records in each place. The 1975 study ‘Economic, Social and Cultural Influences on Military Participation in Two Canadian Provinces,’ conducted by military sociologist F.C. Pinch, contrasted two provinces with extreme experiences, both in terms of their own economic trajectory and in their relationship to CF recruiting. Alberta was chosen as a ‘region of high economic growth,’ also referred to in the report as one of ‘the haves’ regions, while Nova Scotia was described as a region of ‘low economic growth,’ one of ‘the have-nots.’ The connections between regional economies and recruitment were presented at first in a simple and straightforward manner. Low-growth areas have high unemployment rates and so a greater portion of the population in search of employment opportunities. In poor regions, workers are less able to be discriminating about the form employment might take. This was the CFPARU’s initial explanation for the high levels of enrolment from low-growth areas. The combination of limited work prospects and outward mobility patterns in areas of slow economic growth suggested some promising geographies for recruitment for the military. ‘Where wages are low and unemployment is high,’ the CFPARU (1975a:7) concludes, ‘we should expect to find the most favourable response to military recruitment … Thus, an employment organization that offers individuals a chance to leave the province with the guarantee of stable employment and reasonable wage levels, as do the Canadian Forces, will attract a disproportionately greater number of recruits in these economically-depressed areas than in the more affluent ones.’
144 Military Workfare
However, the report also provides a more nuanced reading of the relationships between recruitment and regional economies. The CFPARU looked at the particular work cultures that constituted these regions and found that growth relied on different orientations towards work by a host of actors: regional governments, educators, and workers themselves. The report was designed to contrast the economic experiences of these provinces measured in terms of growth rates, productivity, employment levels, and income criteria, but actually takes aim at the cultural practices that emerge with, and reproduce, distinct labour markets. It documents how the very qualities that were understood to accompany economic growth in Alberta, such as entrepreneurialism, individualism, and high levels of personal mobility among workers, were themselves in conflict with military futures. In particular, the report describes the qualities associated with the highly industrialized work setting, but it understands these trends not in relation to individual firms or industries or national processes but in relation to the production and reproduction of regional labour forces: A characteristic of the labour force in highly industrialized areas has been identified as a ‘universalistic orientation’ to employment. This refers to the heavy emphasis placed, by employers and employees alike, on the application of an impersonal standard of performance, and the allocation of status on the basis of skill and competence rather than other criteria. The widespread, common understandings that this approach engenders permit workers to move from one employment setting to another without experiencing the disruption that would result if they had to learn a whole new set of standards and responses. For example, a machinist may quit at Stelco and go to work for Dofasco the next day, and be able to operate effectively within a very short time. The young worker in areas of advanced industrialization has at his disposal a set of social skills and orientations that are more or less applicable to modern, bureaucratic work places in general. These reflect at least an outward acceptance of the rational criteria of skill and competence on which performance will be assessed. Status is expected to be based on mastery of specific levels of education and/or technical knowledge and demonstrated competence; the status conferred is considered appropriate only to the immediate work setting. Once the worker completes his day’s tasks, his obligations to the organization cease, and he is free to pursue any other endeavours he so wishes. (CFPARU 1975a:29)
The Urban, the Educated, and the Recruitment Crisis 145
The CFPARU’s analysis would thus target the cultural dimensions of economic change, and emphasize the role of what Bourdieu (1977) would term ‘habitus’ in shaping individual agents and larger social collectivities. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus describes precisely these cultural practices through which groups distinguish themselves, particularly as a dimension of class relations. On the one hand, it is puzzling that military researchers were developing sophisticated analyses of social change that paralleled some of the leading critical theories of the day, although several key researchers from CFPARU were trained in civilian universities under leading Canadian sociologists such as John Porter. And yet, military researchers were increasingly making connections across cultural, political, economic, and social domains that were unusual to find even in leading civilian work. It is arguably because of their highly pressing, focused, and instrumental needs that such interdisciplinary thinking was able to take shape (the military’s own ‘cramped space’?). In order to recruit large numbers of people into a particular set of work and life conditions, the military relied on a practical sense of the population’s motivations, interests, and orientations. But these aims should also raise questions about the form of knowledge researchers produced. Indeed, as I will explore in the following chapter, national space was mapped like a battlefield in order to uncover social ‘targets.’ Education and the Reproduction of Regional Economies The process of urbanization and industrialization begun in World War I and continued in World War II has hastened the reforms attending the social, economic and political institutions throughout the country. The change from a rural-agricultural to a predominantly urban-industrial economy is reflected in all of Canada’s communities and has brought about changes in many a manner and mode of life. These changes, too, have brought with them the problems of people in transition from one mode of life to another. People young and old, native and migrant, skilled and unskilled feeling the impact of innovation have sought and found security in education. (Katz 1969:xviii)
Concern for the uneven geography of recruitment led the military to wade into the expansive terrain of social reproduction, and here again education became a key factor in its investigations. The CFPARU started off with observations about the impact of education levels on
146 Military Workfare
the geographic variability of recruit data. ‘The differences between regions,’ the CFPARU (1975a:52) noted, ‘can be partially explained by school participation rates, since secondary and post-secondary school enrolment rates also rise from east to west.’ Across the country there appeared to be a relationship between education levels and enlistment rates. After more analysis of these dynamics, the unit found that ‘welleducated enrollees from the Maritimes tend to act in the same way as those from other regions.’ The CFPARU proceeded to argue that public investment in education and training, a provincial responsibility, was a key factor in uneven regional development. It contrasted Alberta’s model of economic development, centred on education and ‘innovation,’ with the generally stagnant economy of Nova Scotia, with its low levels of investment in education and technical training: ‘In Alberta government and industry are currently increasing their efforts to develop and expand the labour force in order to meet increased job opportunities’ (CFPARU 1975a:17). ‘Between 1970 and 1972,’ the report continues, ‘Alberta accounted for about 11 percent of the increase of approximately 10 thousand full-time enrolments in technical programmes in Canada in contrast to Nova Scotia’s one percent. Holding provincial parameters constant, Alberta’s expansion in technical training was five times that of Nova Scotia. Also, in 1973, males enrolled in post-secondary, non-degree institutions for the two provinces numbered 4814 and 740 for Alberta and Nova Scotia, respectively. Again, controlling for population size, Alberta has proportionately over three and one half times as many students as did Nova Scotia.’ The report also profiles the social learning of youth in different regions, outlining how socio-economic status informs the attitudes of young people towards work and education, which directly affects career trajectory. In this way, economic geography becomes a crucial factor shaping young people’s orientations to military service. ‘Measures of socio-economic status (SES) based on income and education, show that Nova Scotia has a lower-ranking labour force population than does Alberta,’ the CFPARU (1975a:50) asserts. In contrast with youth from Alberta and other regions characterized by high socio-economic status, these youth ‘tend to aspire less frequently to higher levels of attainment, and are less likely to complete their education,’ and ‘are more likely to have lower occupational aspirations; and c. are more likely to accept lower status jobs (of which military service is an example), regardless of educational level attained.’
The Urban, the Educated, and the Recruitment Crisis 147
Family Ties In its efforts to outline the role of social learning in the production of regional economies, the CFPARU eventually shifted attention to the learning that happens outside of formal institutions. It identified the family as centrally important in this regard. In later reports, the CFPARU found that the vast majority of applicants and recruits to the CF had some form of personal or familial connection to the armed forces. Personal contact with a serving or former member of the CF was the largest source of initial information for applicants, and more than onethird of all applicants (33.8 per cent) were from military families. Reporting in 1989, but looking back on these questions historically, the CFPARU writes that ‘the combination of [military experience and military family] data show that more than half (57.1%) of all CF applicants had been exposed to the military prior to making application to the CF. Within this group, 14.6% had been exposed to the military both through direct military involvement and family members’ (1989:30). The report further explains that these findings were obtained through a consideration of immediate family members only, and suggests that the figure would be much higher if the study had included extended family in the analysis. While there was regional variation in the percentage of recruits with prior exposure to the military, the importance of this connection cut across regions, suggesting that familial socialization and learning was also critical in influencing orientations to military work. CFPARU data revealed that 65 per cent of applicants from the ‘Atlantic Zone’ had some kind of military experience before making application. The same was true for more than 60 per cent of ‘Western Zone’ applicants. Even in Quebec, where the lowest proportion of applicants had prior military experience, the figure was still over 50 per cent. In fact, nationwide figures revealed that the child of a man who had served in the military was one hundred times more likely to serve. This was not the first time recruiters relied on the family in order to access or understand the potential recruit; the military had a history of mobilizing wives and mothers, as I discussed in the last chapter. However, this was the first time that the military began to quantify the role of the family in socializing youth for the military. The family could both contribute to the military’s understanding of the reproduction of different local cultures and economies and help it better understand the reproduction of military culture specifically. It came to appreciate ‘the vital role that
148 Military Workfare
military organizations and military families play in generating CF applicants’ as these ‘two environments not only generate a significant number of applicants for the CF, but also play an important role in exposing individuals to the values and benefits of military employment’ (CFPARU 1989:37). Through familial exposure, ‘realistic expectations about military employment’ could be developed ‘that could facilitate higher CF retention rates among this population cohort.’ These observations became grounds for recommendations to investigate ways ‘to effectively expand its recruiting base by making optimum use of Cadet and Reserve organizations and military families.’ Mobilizing the military family as a cornerstone of ‘military socialization infrastructure’ became increasingly important in recruiting strategies to come. Urban/Rural/Regional Why should the decision of country folk to look for work in the city imply in their minds any more lasting transformation than joining the armed forces or some branch of the economy did for British or German men and women in the two world wars? They did not intend to change their way of life for good, even though it turned out that they did. (Hobsbawn 1994:288)
In addition to these important geographical trends at the regional scale, the CFPARU documented overlapping and intersecting transformations in the changing role and culture of cities. Cities were growing quickly and were playing a more and more important role in defining the norms of Canadian society and economy. In fact, the economic transformations associated with ‘high-growth regions’ were deeply tied to the fundamentally urban phenomenon of industrialization. The industrialization and urbanization of the Canadian population and economy was propelled by the rapid expansion of secondary manufacturing during the Second World War (Guest 1997:105). This industrialization had an enormous impact on urban/rural population distributions, such that, by the early 1960s, only a quarter of the Canadian population was rural, compared with 90 per cent at the turn of the century (Katz 1969:15). The Canadian Welfare Council described the intensity of the geographic transformations of the population just as the war machine was reaching its peak: Life is shifting everywhere, for war production and Air and Defence construction are in concentrated areas. Nearly 70% of the placements made by the Employment Service of Canada, in the last month available,
The Urban, the Educated, and the Recruitment Crisis 149 involved the removal of the worker from the vicinity in which he applied. Workers are following work or the hope of it; families following the workers. Over 100,000 of Canada’s enlisted men are in the Non-Permanent Active Militia. In many cases, families have followed them to the centres of their duty. Towns, adjacent to new war industries, naval stations, air and training camps, are jammed, their social agencies overwhelmed with dependents ‘broke until pay day.’ Busy centres are busier, large cities growing larger, the depopulation of the land threatening to increase. (CWC 1941:4)
The speed of urbanization in the post-war era was particularly striking. Between 1951 and 1961 over thirty Canadian cities reached populations ranging from 50,000 to 2 million (Katz 1969:15). The regional dimensions of urbanization were also striking at this time, which the CFPARU documented in great detail. It described the rapid urbanization that was under way in Alberta, in contrast to the relative stagnation in Nova Scotia. ‘In 1951,’ it writes, ‘both provinces were far less urbanized than was Canada. Nova Scotia’s rural/urban composition has changed very little in the ensuing period; in fact, the urban population decreased slightly from 1951 to 1961, and increased by only 2.4 percent for the decade ending in 1971.’ This was in strong contrast to Alberta, where the ‘urban population increased by about 16 percent during the 1951 to 61 period and by over 10 percent from 1961 to 1971. In 1971, 73.5 percent of Alberta’s population was concentrated in urban areas; this was to Nova Scotia’s 56.7 percent.’ The uneven regional geography of urbanization was remarkable. Growth was fuelled by large-scale migration from rural areas across the country. People came in search of many things, but it was the search for work that was the main catalyst for movement. Much of this urban growth occurred as a result of migration within Canada, but international immigration, particularly from areas outside of Britain and Europe, was becoming a growing source of population growth in Canada’s large cities. It was at the intersections of these two geographic processes, a regionalization and urbanization of economic development, that recruiting problems could be mapped. In fact, most of the characteristics of the shifting economy that had been associated with ‘high-growth regions’ were a feature of urbanizing regions and urban labour forces. Regional and urban/rural unevenness was also apparent in public education provision. ‘There are many inequalities in Canadian secondary education,’ one scholar commented in 1969. ‘Many of these
150 Military Workfare Table 4.3 Percentage of Urban Population by Region,* 1901–1996 Region
1901
1921
1941
1961
1981
1991
1996
Ontario
40.3
58.5
67.5
77.3
81.7
81.8
83.3
British Columbia
46.4
50.9
64.0
72.6
78.0
80.4
82.1
Quebec
36.1
51.8
61.2
74.3
77.6
77.6
78.0
Western Canada
19.3
28.7
32.4
57.6
71.4
74.4
74.4
Atlantic Canada
24.5
38.8
44.1
50.1
54.9
54.1
52.8
Canada
34.9
47.4
55.7
70.2
76.2
77.2
77.9
*Newfoundland was not included in Atlantic Canada figures until 1961 Source: Bone 2000:165.
inequalities derive from the social and economic disparities which exist between different parts of the country. The student who lives in Montreal or Toronto has a much better chance of attending a school education with qualified teachers and good libraries and laboratories than the student who lives in the northern part of either Saskatchewan or Quebec’ (Katz 1969:83). That Katz compares two prosperous cities with two relatively stagnant regions of provinces is no coincidence; this gap in education was marked precisely by disparity between urban and non-urban areas. He continues, ‘The dichotomy between rural and urban provisions for education are quite marked across the country, and this inequality takes its toll of many students who on moving to the city find themselves ill prepared either for advanced studies in school or for work.’ Scholars and military researchers alike began to note distinct qualities of urban life that cut across regional boundaries. They describe a growing cultural disparity between Canada’s industrial centres and rural hinterlands. Katz explains that the ‘migration of young people from rural to urban Canada altered the character of both types of community resulting in a shift in social and economic patterns’ (1969:15). He argues that the rising ‘average age of the population in rural communities,’ as a result of the out-migration of youth, intensified ‘the conservative character of rural areas,’ and had the effect of enhancing the ‘political disparity between rural and urban areas.’ Pointing to a problem of geography and electoral politics that haunts Canadian politics powerfully today, Katz notes that ‘political patterns changed, upsetting the balance in provincial legislatures to the degree that urban
The Urban, the Educated, and the Recruitment Crisis 151
centres are still under-represented and votes in rural centres are worth double or triple those in urban communities.’ The overrepresentation of rural areas and ‘rural values’ in national politics would soon be challenged by the rise of a new Canadian liberalism representing a younger, politically progressive urban citizenry. This large-scale shift in the social and economic geography of Canadians was thus an intimate part of the cultural transformations in the interests and aspirations of workers. The growing cultural gap between big-city and small-town Canada was, furthermore, a dangerous development for recruiters when combined with the growing population and symbolic power of cities in Canada. ‘Overall, then,’ the CFPARU (1975a:34) asserts, rapid urbanization is ‘expected to lower the potential for recruitment to the Forces.’ The Residual Soldier and the New Iconic Citizen Recruitment problems of the 1960s thus triggered the creation of a whole new organization and focus for the military’s research unit, which went on to produce some early and astute analysis of social change in Canada. From the growth of education to the decline of working-class employment, to the transformations in the cultures of work and desires of workers, and finally to the reshaping of labour geographies, the CFPARU amassed an incredible amount of data on the emergence of new norms of working life. As time passed and research reports on various themes piled up, the CFPARU began to synthesize change in these various domains to provide a dramatic image of transformations in the norms of worker-citizenship. It outlined the contours of a bleak future for military recruitment, which would require a creative and commanding response. The military was failing to attract the more desirable applicants and failing to retain enough of the ones it managed to attract. It was becoming a last-resort employment option and earning a reputation as a social daycare for misfits and reprobates. The CFPARU (1975c:15) went so far as to describe military personnel as ‘fall-out’ from the labour force. By 1975 it argued that ‘the majority of recruits are persons who are pushed toward application after marginal employment experiences.’ But who was this recruit? Which citizens would look forward to a military career that few other Canadians would choose? Service life was indeed becoming the fate of an increasingly marginal group of Canadians, in contrast to the broader participation and popularity of
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the CF in the war and post-war decades. Over the course of the 1970s the CFPARU generated an increasingly detailed profile of the military citizen as well as the new normative Canadian worker-citizen. These profiles would reveal the military’s frustration with and hostility towards the shortcomings of its own personnel. The tone of this work was in some ways startling and in other ways fitting for an employer that routinely sacrifices the life of its workers. CFPARU analysis was rooted initially in labour force activity, and the findings supported the diagnosis of personnel as ‘fall-out’ from the labour force. Only 28 per cent of applicants to the Forces were employed in 1975, compared to a national rate of employment for males aged 17–25 of 65 per cent. Of those who were employed, most came from seasonal and temporary industries such as construction and services and faced chronic underemployment. The role of the military as a residual employer became clear when the CFPARU documented that 75 per cent of applicants sought other employment after making application to the Forces, and waited between one and three years to actually enlist. It was in the discussions of blue-collar work that the relationship between the economic and political marginality of military citizens emerges most clearly. The CFPARU (1975c:11) explains how ‘applicants are being disproportionately drawn from blue-collar family backgrounds as opposed to white-collar backgrounds. The difference is primarily tied to substantial under-representation of individuals from families in the professional, technical or managerial category and substantial over-representation from the construction and service sectors of the labour force.’ Young workers from the growing professional and middle classes were not choosing careers in the military. The relative value of the military as a career option in terms of both its material and symbolic rewards was in decline. The economic geography of personnel was an indication of their increasing political marginality. These connections between the geographies of economic and cultural power in the labour market can be usefully understood through the lens of citizenship. Citizenship does not simply entail the formal status of legal membership in a national polity. Rather, as Turner (1993:2) argues, citizenship is a ‘set of practices (juridical, political, economic and cultural) which define a person as a competent member of society and which, as a consequence, shape the flow of resources to persons and social groups.’ The formal and national articulation of citizenship remains crucial for the access it accords individuals to a set of political rights (Varsanyi 2006). The national conception and practice of
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citizenship has also been at the centre of modern territorial politics and immanent to both the constitution of nation states and a national imaginary of war and politics, as I outline in the introductory chapter to this book (see also Cowen and Gilbert 2007). Still, the government of formal citizenship at the national scale does not exhaust the substantive acts and geographies of political practice and belonging that constitute citizenship. Indeed, a growing body of literature investigates how citizenship is constituted through substantive struggles, as well as in solidaristic and agonistic relations that take shape over place and through space, at multiple scales (Painter and Philo 1995; Isin 2002; Staeheli 2003). In Engin Isin’s words, ‘space is the machine’ of group formations and relations that constitute citizenship (2002:43). The ability to occupy, shape, govern, and represent space is thus a critical dimension of power. The case of the national soldier would seem to suggest a citizenship that is particularly bounded by the national. And yet, these uneven geographies of military service within the nation ask us to rethink the meaning of this privileged role of the national scale. The national regulation of citizenship and the national imaginaries of politics that allow for the reproduction of the former are at once constituted by these particular struggles across the polity but also rely on their denial. Uneven development, regional disparity, and spatialized political struggles are at once constitutive of, and made invisible in, national politics. Furthermore, this case of the soldier and the changing cultural and economic geographies of the labour market points to the entwined nature of work and citizenship. It reveals the political nature of each domain, and their important connections in this particular regime. This case points to the ways in which the desire for particular employment forms and employment relations are not random or individual choices but instead an effect of the historical production of political subjects. For instance, this case reveals that the changing nature of citizenship, such as the emergence of rights-based civilian social welfare, had profound and complex impacts on the norms of labour markets. The geographical marginality of recruits is furthermore an important sign of their simultaneous political and economic marginality. In the 1970s military citizens were increasingly marginal worker-citizens, those who had little in the way of options for the future beyond doing the work that most others rejected. The nation’s cities were virtually off the map for recruiters. These cities were the source and site of economic growth, the destination for newcomers to Canada, the place where experimentation with new
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forms of political and artistic expression and rebellion were taking place, and where an important segment of the young Canadian labour force was (re)producing itself. It was in cities that the political conflicts associated with ‘new social movements’ were igniting. In these places, the military machine had virtually no reach. Applicants were ‘drawn disproportionately from the smaller towns and cities and from rural environments’ (CFPARU 1975c:12). Researchers again warned of the dangers these trends presented for recruiters. ‘When one considers that the long-term trend is toward a more urbanized population,’ they assert, ‘the over-representation from less urbanized areas must be a matter of concern.’ The CFPARU thus concluded that the military had a serious problem on its hands. It was painfully clear that the military was becoming a residual form of employment in the emerging environment of more educated urbanites. The changes were not just about employer preference or the details of wage rates, but had everything to do with the eclipse of the hegemonic power of a work-cultural regime of national militarism and disciplinary labour practices. Material social relations had become less precarious for the majority of Canadians as a result of the expansion of social policy and social security measures after the war. By the late 1960s recruit-aged Canadians had been raised in this collective risk-sharing nation. Young worker-citizens could afford to be more discriminating, without even the awareness that their tastes were enabled by historically engineered abundance. The New Worker-Citizen and the New Liberalism Throughout the 1960s there was a rebirth of guerilla organizations. This rebirth coincided with a growing rejection of the centralized model of the popular army. (Hardt and Negri 2004:74; emphasis in original)
Labour force trends were clearly indicative of broader political and cultural transformations taking place across the country. The late 1960s were marked by a confluence of change, most notably the rise of student movements, anti-authoritarian politics, and anti-war protest. Other forms of radical politics were also emerging, many of which were centred in the nation’s cities, such as feminist, gay and lesbian, and anti-racist movements. The October crisis and the rise of separatism in Quebec along with the growing momentum of Indigenous people’s rights and land claims movements produced a heightened awareness of regional alienation and sub-national political identities,
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which shattered any notion of a unitary or unified Canadian identity. The CFPARU was, in fact, taking stock of a complete reorientation of citizenship in Canada – new forms of political belonging and identity, new norms of embodied practice and expression. The decline of militarism was not simply an element of these emergent norms of political belonging but a key galvanizing force of a new liberalism. Protest to the Vietnam War, to continued colonialisms, and to the proliferation of nuclear weapons programs incited transnational anti-war activism (Morton 1990; van Doorn 1975; Hobsbawm 1994; Granatstein 2004). The anti-militarism of this new ethos was furthermore a direct response to the pervasiveness of violence and the threat of absolute environmental destruction that were realities for this generation. In her study of the transformation of violence that occurred through the experience of the Second World War and following, Hannah Arendt argues that the student activism of the 1960s was largely prompted by a sense of desperation that stemmed from the increasingly precarious nature of life itself in the Cold War atomic era. The willingness of young people around the world to act boldly and risk so much in order to make political demands was a result of the immediacy of the threat of war, violence, and permanent militarism. Arendt (1970:19) writes: It is only natural that the new generation should live with greater awareness of the possibility of doomsday than those ‘over thirty,’ not because they are younger but because this was their first decisive experience of the world. (What are ‘problems’ to us ‘are built into the flesh and blood of the young.’) If you ask a member of this generation two simple questions: ‘How do you want the world to be in fifty years?’ and ‘What do you want your life to be like five years from now?’ the answers are quite often preceded by ‘Provided there is still a world,’ and ‘Provided I am still alive.’
Peace movements and anti-nuclear activism surged across Canada and much of the world. ‘Peace had a Canadian echo in protests against testing American Cruise missiles over Northern Canada,’ Morton (1990:264) writes. He describes how ‘large processions in Canadian cities and smaller pilgrimages to the airbase and rocket range at Cold Lake in northern Alberta marked the revival of Canada’s peace coalitions.’ The insurgence grew in numbers when the Innu protested NATO’s use of their traditional hunting grounds in Labrador for low-level flying.
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The decline of militarism was a fundamental feature of Canada’s new liberalism, but it was also a transnational phenomenon. It was simultaneously particular and general. Citizens across Western capitalist countries questioned the role of their nations’ militaries. Global military expenditure was at a record high in 1970, but a gradual reduction of ‘military manpower’ in Europe had been initiated (van Doorn 1975:58). There was also a notable shift in the symbolic value of military service and, more specifically, a decline in widespread support for the national military in the same set of nations. ‘The basis of the mass army … the system of general conscription, is being subjected to increasing pressure and plans for an all-volunteer force are becoming more definite in a number of countries,’ van Doorn explains. ‘Underlying these trends is the more fundamental problem of the declining legitimacy of the armed forces … It is reflected with particular clarity in the reaction of the younger generation to conscription, and there is a feeling in many western countries that the armed forces are facing a crisis as a result of their increasing unpopularity with the public.’ Anti-authoritarianism, individualism, and individual rights were increasingly valued qualities, and they infused contemporary social movements. A range of new groups made their way into the political and cultural spotlight, if not the formal halls of national power, from the countercultural fringes. A ‘new middle class’ was emergent and leading a ‘return to the city’ as the consumptive dimension of early gentrification processes (Ley 1996). The rise of reform urban governments with their prioritization of ‘livability’ and accessibility was under way in cities such as Toronto and Vancouver. Jane Jacobs came to Canada with her critiques of modernist city planning, but so too did many other progressive Americans who sought refuge in the social democratic North. Canada’s active construction of a progressive and less-militarized polity gave the country a newfound international reputation. Draft dodgers and other expatriates were lured by the political and cultural shifts being institutionalized in Canadian citizenship. Canada was, after all, a country where the prime minister of the day has been described as having ‘not the slightest interest in or appreciation of’ its own military (Granatstein 2004:98). Major experimentation was under way in federal policy, both with regard to cultural diversity, plurality, and the broad ‘management’ of difference and in direct relation to defence and military policy. Under the governments of Lester B. Pearson and then Pierre Elliott Trudeau came a fundamental reorientation of the norms of
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Plate 4.2 John Lennon and Yoko Ono meet with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in Ottawa, December 1969 Source: Canadian Press (Peter Bregg).
national belonging, with new legislation in the realms of immigration, multiculturalism, bilingualism, Aboriginal rights, sexual politics, and defence. New defence policy was transforming soldiers from warwagers to peacekeepers. Trudeau furthermore reduced the number of troops serving under the NATO banner and froze the defence budget. The percentage of the federal budget devoted to national defence dropped from 18 per cent in 1967–8 to 13 per cent in 1971–2, and the size of the Canadian Forces was reduced by 17,000 personnel between 1968 and 1974 (Granatstein 2004:117). The CF went from 126,474 personnel in 1962 down to 101,676 in 1968, and would continue to decline after reaching 82,000 in 1984. In fact, the only area where Trudeau seemed to prioritize military force was in the realm of ‘sovereignty’ and the defence of Canada against its own citizens. In addition to sending the military into the streets of Montreal to quell the FLQ uprising in the fall of 1970, Trudeau also reordered defence priorities to put ‘the surveillance of our territory and coastline’ and ‘the protection of our sovereignty’ as the number one priority in 1969 (Morton 1990:254).
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Trudeau was not simply at the helm for the introduction of these sweeping changes in Canadian politics and Canadian defence; he also became the celebrity figure at the centre of ‘Trudeaumania.’ Characterized by a Reagan administration official as ‘a leftist high on pot’ (Granatstein 2004:120), Trudeau was unlike national leaders of the past. He read eastern philosophy, schmoozed with stars, and was even a reputed swinger. For many young Canadians, it was Trudeau who represented emergent ‘postmodern’ values and mores. The transformations that the CFPARU was documenting in the military’s recruit population were thus indicative of profound transformations in hegemonic forms of Canadian citizenship. The increasing marginality of soldiering in the labour force was also indicative of the increasing marginality of military citizenship. The future of military citizenship was deeply in question, and the obstacles for recruiters were becoming immense.
5 Reorienting Recruitment: Towards a ‘Different’ Military?
The military is not an island: its success in the long term hinges upon attracting sufficient numbers of individuals with required skills and aptitudes and retaining them for lengthy periods. It is more akin to a seagoing fishing vessel which must harvest a variety of species in a year. (CFPARU 1975b:1–2) Evidence of the impetus of change is all about us. One obvious example is in new legislation which is relentlessly pounding on the organizations’ doors, legislation involving equal opportunity, language rights, ecology, safety in the workplace, and so forth. The choice is not between ‘change’ and ‘no change,’ but whether organizations will themselves be architects of change, or whether they will have change forced upon them. (Minister of Labour 1981)1 This is not about political correctness, this is about operational effectiveness. The face of Canada is changing, so the recruiting base is going to be changing. In 10 or 20 years, if we don’t start making efforts to inform Indo-Canadians and other distinct groups about us, we won’t have anybody left in the military. (Mullick 2003)2
The military was not immune to the dramatic transformations in national politics of the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, the federal government subjected the CF to successive bouts of largely involuntary change. These centred on the military’s role as an employer and institution of citizenship, and the precise questions of whom it hired, how it did so, in what numbers, and for what duties. These directives, which were part of the effort to ‘modernize’ the Forces, had pervasive impact on
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organizational structure and ‘military culture.’ The reforms aimed to bring the federal government and public institutions in line with the values of multiculturalism, bilingualism, and gender equity – values that were a core part of the Canadian ‘rights revolution,’ which saw the introduction of a spate of legislation that prioritized individual rights. Individuals or, more accurately, groups of individuals would be protected from the abuses of the collective. This started with official languages policy, the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, and multiculturalism legislation, all in the late 1960s and 1970s. The impact of rights legislation on the military would only intensify with the implementation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the early 1980s and employment equity statutes that followed. In addition to this new mandate imposed on the military from above, new policies were also implemented in the CF electively as a result of the ongoing personnel shortage. Study after study had confirmed the widening gap between military ethos and the orientations of young Canadian workers. Those trends demanded a response. Based on the work of the CFPARU, the military designed recruiting strategies that were increasingly specialized and group-specific in order to target specific populations. From a general strategy of making appeals to the same ‘universal’ figure everywhere, the military began targeting particular people in actual places. Between the changes that were imposed on the CF and those that were engineered from within, the military was starting to look and sound very different – in plan if not always in practice. This chapter examines the military’s changing relationships to various forms of social and cultural ‘difference.’ I first examine the transformation of federal government and military policy with regard to bilingualism and consider how the military became central to struggles over language in Canada. I then proceed to examine changing military policy in relation to three different but overlapping problematized social groups – people of colour, Aboriginals, and women. These groups were historically excluded from the military, or exploited in highly oppressive and paternalistic ways, but they became central to employment equity initiatives at this time. I focus first on the military’s anxious and clumsy response to questions of ‘race,’ and how and why this was conflated with the question of immigration. In a second section I discuss elements of the military’s relationship to Native people and the shift from an explicitly colonial project of civilizing or ‘integrating Indians,’ to a complicated military mobilization of social justice discourse and specific celebration of Native rights and tradition in
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Plate 5.1 ‘Diversity/Diversité’ Source: Canadian Forces 2003.
order to increase enrolment. I then shift focus to the changing politics of women in the military, and the paradoxical manoeuvres to reform a deeply masculinist institution without radically reforming the military mandate. I argue that these social ‘problems’ were also geographical problems and show how the military’s response entailed spatially as well as socially targeted recruitment strategies. If social justice and employment equity were entirely new realms for military manoeuvring, then the practice of ‘targeting’ was much more familiar ground. Borrowed from the battlefield, targeting transferred the imaginary of the battlefield to national space. Ironically, though these initiatives were a failure in achieving any significant diversification of the military workforce, or even in raising recruitment rates, through this work the military became one of the most important sources for diversity discourse in Canada. Des Forces Armées Bilingues? Bilingual policy was introduced rapidly and forcefully into the Canadian Forces when compared to other group equity initiatives. French Canadians already served in substantial numbers. Underemployed rural Francophones in search of steady work served in large numbers, even in the 1970s when few others would. Nevertheless, despite their presence in numbers, French Canadians were concentrated in the lower ranks and in policy and practice subjected to a form of second-class citizenship in the Canadian military. Changing policy regarding bilingualism in the
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military was prompted not by recruitment shortages or organized discontent within the Forces but rather by growing separatist sentiment in Quebec. The military became an important site for symbolic and material change. The military is, of course, a large employer and thus an important indirect public transfer of wealth, as well as a key symbolic institution of federal government. Because of its role in the international performance of Canadian identity, and in particular its historical role serving the interests of the British Empire, the CF had long been a site of conflict in national struggles over language politics. As I mentioned in Chapter 2, the conscription crises during the two world wars were largely struggles between French and English Canada. The Pearson government struck the Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in 1963, and when its final report was released in 1969 ‘fresh policies helped establish French-speaking units outside Quebec, enforced bilingualism as a qualification for high command, and imposed a twenty-eight percent proportional representation in recruiting and promotion’ (Morton 1990:258). ‘From being a virtual Anglophone monopoly,’ Morton writes, ‘the Canadian armed forces came, for a time, to resemble the country they served: two mutually resentful solitudes.’ Following the release of this commission’s report, the CF began to plan for sweeping change. The following year, in February 1970, the Chief of Defence Staff released directive P3/70, entitled ‘Bilingualism for the Canadian Armed Forces,’ which outlined four goals: ‘to provide bilingual services to all its publics (internal or external); to reflect the linguistic and cultural values, as well as the proportional representation of the two language groups which made up the Canadian population; to create a climate in which all military personnel could seek to achieve common goals while using either of the two official languages; and, to provide instruction for learning a second language’ (Bernier and Pariseau 1987:28). A new and powerful staff position was created within the CF, the ‘Bilingual Policy Advisor to the Chief of Personnel,’ who would oversee implementation of legislation. The 1970 directive divided implementation into twenty-eight stages, with a first deadline of 1972 and a second for the implementation of all remaining policy by 1980 (Bernier and Pariseau 1987:35). A flurry of reports and memos followed, and by 1975 additional goals were defined. The CF would work towards the ‘judicious use of bilingual personnel; the designation of bilingual positions; an increase as well in the number of bilingual officers chosen for staff colleges, whose personnel should increasingly be able to work in
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both languages; the study of the ways in which English and French documents could be published, side by side; and, inclusion in all military personnel files of the degree of competence rating in both official languages’ (Bernier and Pariseau 1987:28). A quota of 28 per cent was set for Francophone personnel. And while this was certainly higher than the existing numbers (20.3 per cent in 1966), it was not a radical increase, confirming again that the problem was less the numbers of Francophones in the Forces but their distribution across higher ranks. In the 1980s the number of French-speaking personnel in the military actually far surpassed the 28 per cent quota, and growing numbers were promoted into higher ranks. Reflecting on the period from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, the CF outlines, the ‘representation of Francophones and Anglophones in the CF has changed little during the past 10 years; however, the proportion of French-speaking members at senior rank levels has nearly doubled in the same period’ (Canada 1998c:2). Sweeping legislative measures thus transformed the Forces from an English institution with a large French-speaking labour force into something much more akin to a bilingual institution. Given this, and the already large numbers of French Canadians in the military, the ongoing politics of language in the CF was rarely an issue for research and strategy at the level of recruitment policy. Despite the troubled history of Francophones in the military, their ‘recruitability’ meant that they were never included as an employment equity group. A presence in numbers now makes them normal. Of course, struggles over language did not cease just because personnel numbers changed. Tensions among personnel are rife and easily observed by any outsider. During my term as an instructor at the Royal Military College of Canada in 2003,3 language was a source of antagonistic social ordering among the students – the officer cadets. On a tour of the mess, my Anglophone students gestured to a group of Francophone cadets across the room, and said that as members of the Francophone 22nd Regiment they believed that they would become the official military of the state of Quebec after succession. Nevertheless, despite the persistence of tensions around language, the CF is also the largest and best-trained bilingual workforce in the country. Many applicants now list language training as a primary reason for their interest in the military. Bilingualism was perhaps the only area of equity policy in the military where the impetus for change had little to do with the recruitment crisis. Changes to other areas of group-based rights and ‘diversity’ in
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employment were implemented as a result of various combinations of force and necessity. Recruitment shortages and retention failure meant that the status quo could not be sustained, and a new approach had to be engineered to attract new personnel. Targeting the Minor and the Mainstream By the late 1970s the CFPARU had reported on every conceivable variable to describe the state of both the national labour force and its own. The CFPARU had done so repetitively, creating volumes of documents that traced the same trends. It did so as if refusing to believe what had become obvious, or with the faint hope that it might find some figure or measure that would suggest something different. When it was clear that there was no simple way out of the dilemma, the CF gradually started to strategize its response. Following the predictions of the economic forecasters of the time, military researchers anticipated that a strong national economy would compound their recruitment pressures throughout the 1980s. Indeed, oil-rich Alberta shielded the country from the earliest and worst effects of the OPEC crisis, which had already hit the United States and Britain. The recession wasn’t yet on the horizon, even though it would soon turn out to be the worst in more than forty years. However inaccurately, the CFPARU assumed highly competitive recruiting conditions for the coming decade. In response, it called for aggressive recruiting strategies to ‘lure’ workers away from other employment opportunities (CFPARU 1974a:25). It insisted that there was a need to introduce hiring practices and administrative structures ‘more in line with the realities of industrial society; and thereby, to provide a wider base from which to draw, and to retain, highly qualified military manpower’ (CFPARU 1975a:54). The research unit asserted that ‘the problem of military recruitment in industrialized societies is today being faced by all modern armed forces that depend on voluntary enlistment.’ The problem was not uniquely Canadian, nor was the strategy that the CF was developing in response. While recruiting trends manifested themselves in distinctly Canadian social geographies, they also had supranational salience. The dynamics that gave rise to recruiting shortages, such as the extension of education and the expansion of social welfare after the war, were common across advanced capitalist nations. Military researchers in Canada, the United States, and Britain developed similar responses to their
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recruitment problems, sometimes as a result of direct consultations and information sharing, and other times because of close parallels in the challenges they faced. In the decade between the early 1970s and the early 1980s, these militaries resolved to become ‘more competitive’ employers, thus deepening an economic conception of the national military and national government. The CFPARU concocted a plan to modernize the workplace and expand the benefits of service, which I examine in some detail in the next chapter. Simultaneously, it elected to adopt group-specific or ‘targeted’ recruitment strategies. The rise of targeting in the military has a precise genealogy that I outline here; however, targeting was part of a broader and significant reconfiguration of liberal governmentality. As a number of scholars have argued, the rise of targeted government was a symptom of the erosion of ‘universalism’ and this particular vision and practice of the social (Brodie 1996b; Rose 2000; Cowen 2005b). ‘Targeting serves to pathologize difference as well as place the designated groups under increased state surveillance and administrative control,’ Janine Brodie argues. Targeting explicitly locates subjects outside the norms of the citizenship (Brodie 1996b), but it also takes up concerns with efficiency and access, as with the rise of target marketing in the business world. In both its displacement of universalism and its introduction of a kind of market calculation and efficiency to the realm of government, targeting is a quintessentially neoliberal logic. As the very language of ‘targeting’ might suggest, the military was an early pioneer with these forms. The CFPARU (1975c:16) argued that adopting targeted strategies would help ‘supplement the recruiting core by making inroads into the under-represented pool, i.e., increased recruitment of skilled and experienced workers, the better educated individuals, and the urban segment.’ In this way, the CF might achieve ‘increased selectivity from the “core” pool of recruits.’ ‘Can we attract and retain more of the independent, creative types?’ one hopeful officer asked, two decades before debates about Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’ erupted. Indeed, while confident that the military ‘should make an effort to attract this type, as they will be the leaders of the future,’ the officer was uncertain of the outcome: ‘If we want to attract this type and seek these individuals, could the system tolerate them?’ (Belak 1978).4 The military proceeded with a plan that was ambitious but simple: ‘tap into’ the very groups of Canadians who had desirable skill sets and education levels, and who were growing in
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numbers. The core of its strategy entailed developing more precise recruiting campaigns and policies that would try to pique the interests of particular groups. Historically, CF recruiting strategies included a limited amount of regionally specific materials. Most often this would mean simply that the details of meeting place and time for a recruiter’s visit to a given town could be adjusted on a recruiting poster; hence the circa 1958 ads for military recruitment in ‘Blanktown’ shown in Plate 5.2. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s recruitment materials were produced centrally, with room for only this kind of minor differentiation. Even the campaigns to promote the experiences of ‘local boys’ in the CF in communities across Canada during the 1950s that I discussed in Chapter 2 were planned and coordinated centrally and didn’t aim for regional sensitivity or variation, beyond the selection of boys themselves. Awareness of the increasingly narrow demographics of applicants and the recruit base, along with the goal of expanding the pool of potential applicants for enlistment, provoked the call for ‘difference’ in recruiting appeals. In order to beat the odds working against them, recruiters would ‘require increased flexibility in recruiting practices, both in terms of standards for entry and in terms of the appeals made to various groups’ (CFPARU 1975c:17). There are clearly ‘different varieties of prospective applicants in Canada,’ the CFPARU explains, and incentives ‘which attract people from one socio-demographic category may have relatively little appeal to those in other categories.’ Crafting targeted messages would allow the military to reach different social and geographical groups. ‘A strong case … has already been made for different recruiting strategies in the various regions of the country,’ but ‘this requirement for increased flexibility extends to other social and demographic characteristics of the potential applicant population.’ The military’s approach to targeted recruitment stemmed from a notion of geographic divergence in Canadian society. It envisioned ‘at least two types of social systems in Canada from which the Forces attempt to attract recruits: one seen in regions displaying historical patterns of economic advantage, and another, quite different type, found in regions less advantaged,’ each with its own unique ‘labour force characteristics and behaviours.’ Targeting was implemented to maximize the reach of recruiting efforts, but also with a mind for economy. Targeting would ‘allow for more rational allocation of recruiting resources’ (CFPARU 1974a:63), and would also allow the military to reach new groups that the CFPARU had only started to identify as a potential recruit base.
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Plate 5.2 ‘Blanktown’ Source: Advertisement ‘Blanktown’ © National Defence Canada. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2005). Library and Archives Canada/National Defence fonds/RG24, vol. 3374, file 304-20-7, part 2.
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Ironically, it was the very groups that were excluded from military citizenship in the post-war decades that were now being contemplated for targeted inclusion. The strict Anglophone and white norms of service life after the war no longer seemed to make sense. This rethinking of labour and membership in the military also implicated groups that had been included in the military but in particular and limited ways. Women, Aboriginals, immigrants, and racialized groups all promised to save the military from cultural irrelevance and social marginality. A Racialized Labour Geography (of Whiteness) Since the early days of European colonization, the land that became known as Canada was inhabited by a large number of people born elsewhere. As contemporary government documents proudly proclaim, Canada is a multicultural nation of immigrants. However, during the later half of the twentieth century the nationalities of people coming to Canada started to change. Immigration policy was re-engineered under prime ministers Pearson and Trudeau in ways that moderated its explicitly racist structure. In 1966 the Pearson government introduced a White Paper on immigration policy with the goal of encouraging as many immigrants to Canada as possible in order to boost the national population and economy. This document helped undermine policies based on ‘national origins’ embedded in the ‘preferred countries’ approach that had dominated Canadian immigration policy since the end of the First World War. In 1967 the ‘points system’ was introduced. It was designed to remove discrimination based on nationality, and in place it assessed applicants on various skills criteria such as language ability and education level. These criteria were hardly impartial, but their bias related first to the instrumental assessments of Canada’s labour force needs rather than to race and national origin. Canada’s borders were thus opened to people with the right degrees and talents who came from parts of the world that had been virtually ‘locked out’ under old policies. As a result of these legislative changes, the major-source countries of immigrants shifted rapidly from Europe to Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. These new immigrants came from different places in the world, but also settled in different places in Canada – almost exclusively in large urban areas. Thus, changes to immigration policy not only transformed the national population but also fuelled changes in the population in Canadian cities. In this way, immigration was a critical factor in the growing cultural gap between urban and rural Canada.
Reorienting Recruitment 169
A discussion that links Canada’s current ethno-cultural diversity to these decades presents the risk of erasing the long histories of people of colour in this country, and implicitly erecting a narrative of actual rather than hegemonic whiteness in the time preceding. The histories of people of colour in Canada reveal a long legacy of contribution and exploitation that predates Confederation. In addition to the very creation of Canada as a home on native land, long-standing communities of racialized people have struggled to build lives since long ago, including Nova Scotia’s Africville, established in the 1830s, and Victoria’s Chinatown, established in the 1850s. As I argued in Chapter 2, the notion of a culturally, ethno-racially, religiously, or linguistically unified and united national citizenry was just that: a powerful, constructed, and heavily regulated notion. The ideology of a homogeneous nation governed citizenship and had its material reality in a distinctly Canadian legacy of racism. Meaningful changes were, however, taking place in the 1960s and 1970s that made the ethno-racial origins of recruits increasingly a concern to researchers. The growing number of immigrants from ‘nontraditional source countries’ and the scale and speed of population change in various parts of Canada meant that an institution like the CF could no longer be blind to its own ethno-racial specificity. It was, in fact, in 1974 that ‘non whites’ for the first time constituted the majority of immigrants entering Canada. As Sharma (2006) recounts, a racist response to this shift was what allowed immigration status to be conflated with ‘race’ in Canada. Indeed, in response to the growing numbers of people of colour in Canada, a racist recasting of key concepts such as ‘immigrant’ and ‘ethnicity’ took place from this point onward. The practice of targeting racialized groups for recruitment did not get under way until the 1980s, yet it was as early as 1975 that the CFPARU first started to consider the question of ethnicity explicitly and strategically in relation to recruitment. It was in its early analysis of the regional dimensions of recruitment patterns that the important role of immigration status was documented and interpreted as a question of ethnicity. The CFPARU explained how ‘ethnic composition is … an important factor in determining whether or not military service will be viewed as a job option by a given province’s youth’ (1975a:38). In these early accounts, ‘ethnicity’ was understood to be something that other people had – people who were not of British or French heritage. Ethnicity was furthermore conceptualized as something of an obstacle to recruitment. It was consistently conflated with immigration status in
170 Military Workfare
CFPARU reports, as though they were interchangeable concepts, well into the 1990s. In fact, it appears that the ontological status of these concepts was so confusing that in 1991 CFPARU issued a single report twice under two different titles: ‘Ethnic Participation in the Canadian Forces: Demographic Trends,’ and ‘Canadian Forces Immigrant Recruitment: A Preliminary Case Study.’ The substitution of ‘immigrant’ for ‘ethnic,’ and vice versa, is highly revealing. The assumption that these two concepts are interchangeable suggests that their social meanings are also more or less the same. But while ‘immigrant’ is a purely politico-legal category that signifies to the status of a person living in a national territory other than the one of his or her birth, ‘ethnic’ is a more mobile concept that signifies cultural norms. To be ‘ethnic’ means one is perceived to be a member of a group that has some combination of cultural, religious, linguistic, and physical characteristics, which dominant groups define as different from their own. I suggest that ‘ethnic’ is a highly variable term based on the historical and geographical malleability of its meaning. For example, Italians have been considered ‘ethnic’ in the Canadian context as a result of the perception that they have a distinct set of cultural practices; meanwhile, gays and lesbians, who may also be interpreted as having distinct cultures, have not. A group can also migrate from being ‘ethnic’ at one point in time to gradually become part of the dominant culture. The concept ‘ethnic’ further creates equivalence between radically different groups simply by virtue of their common categorization as ‘other.’ Most important, the conflation of the terms ‘immigrant’ and ‘ethnic’ does the powerful work of transforming cultural difference into geographical difference; ethnic identity becomes synonymous with outsider status. The lack of serious engagement with racism in the ranks persisted alongside the CF’s growing interest in recruiting racialized citizens. It was concern for the military’s own recruiting needs that led to the first late awareness of the whiteness of the Forces, its policies and its people, rather than any newfound concern for justice or the rights of racialized groups. In fact, the CFPARU initially attributed the low participation rates of people of colour in the military to the failings of their own cultures, rather than the systemic racism or hegemonic whiteness of the military. According to CFPARU, these groups segregate themselves and retreat from mainstream social life and public institutions. This had implications for military recruitment insofar as these groups were understood to have ‘built-in resistance to any move that will take the youth away from the cultural group to which they belong’ (CFPARU 1975a:38).
Reorienting Recruitment 171
The military treated ethnicity as a tactical challenge to be overcome so that it could prevail. The CFPARU transformed the social challenges it faced into the more familiar imaginary of the battlefield, and invoked the language of ‘penetrating ethnic barriers.’ It planned on deploying the ‘few representatives of ethnic minorities now serving in the Forces’ as scouts, ‘since personal contact and knowledge of a given subculture is essential in attracting and relating to prospective recruits’ (CFPARU 1975a:54). The CFPARU suggested that there could be multiple national benefits to this strategy as it is both ‘an opportunity for the Forces to serve their own interests (in manpower) and the national interest (in bringing minorities into the mainstream of Canadian society) at the same time.’ At times in its early reports the CFPARU approached the issue in a more thoughtful and less tactical manner. It recognized that the CF was a historically British institution, which could pose problems for multicultural identification. It further contemplated the ways in which immigrants’ negative experiences with militaries in countries of their birth might make them averse to service life. ‘There are many ethnic groups,’ the CFPARU writes, ‘who have left their native countries simply because they were opposed to military participation’ (1975a:40). This deliberative mode did not last long, however. The CFPARU quickly resumed its analysis of how these groups might ‘block access’ to the CF. Ethnic communities ‘that diverge from the dominant culture in terms of attitudes and values’ may serve to ‘cut the potential applicant off from information that will help him plan for a military career, and otherwise block access to military service, thereby reducing the potential for recruitment.’ Needless to say, the CF failed to attract significant numbers of immigrants or people of colour into service life. Even in the conditions of high unemployment that eventually hit in the 1980s and became the worst recession in forty years, very little progress was made towards diversifying the Forces. This was quite a feat given that unemployment rates for youth, and for youth of colour in particular, were at record highs during this time. In contrast with the strong economic forecasts upon which the CFPARU had based its work in the 1970s, the Canadian economy experienced a massive downturn in the 1980s. Canada’s economy continued to grow in the 1970s while much of the world was hit with a powerful recession. However, jobs were increasingly lost to the mechanization of industry, and the value of the dollar plummeted following the U.S. decision to let its dollar float rather than be tied to the gold standard. Rapid inflation was also under way as a result of the OPEC
172 Military Workfare
crisis. Canada was hit hard, with the exception of Alberta, which prospered long into the recession as a result of its rich oil reserves and skyrocketing global oil prices. In fact, record numbers of millionaires were made in Alberta in the late 1970s until eventually, in the 1980s, the global recession caught up with Alberta too. One of the lasting impacts of this recession was the deepening of regional disparities. Employment and economic growth rates had long been higher in Ontario and the West and lower in the Atlantic provinces, but the gap grew substantially during the 1980s. Unemployment rates were most severe for people with lower levels of education. It was this economic recession that initially gave the CF some relief from its numbers crisis rather than the success of any targeted recruiting strategy. Indeed, while numbers were no longer so dire, old recruiting patterns persisted. Beyond monitoring numbers, the CF did little in the way of proactive policy development at this time (Cotton 2004). This is not surprising given that its conception of the problem was vague and entirely shirked responsibility for making the institution more open and oriented towards racialized and immigrant groups. The lack of change in both the profile of recruits and the practices of the CF during this time was nevertheless striking. The military’s initial failure in this regard becomes clear in the 1980s. With language and ideas that were a hangover from the early 1970s, the CFPARU again explains that the military has not had success ‘in penetrating certain segments of the potential applicant pool … the CF does not appear to be attracting a representative portion of nonBritish/French applicants yet’ (1989:38). Still hopeful, the CFPARU again recommends ‘the development of recruiting programs targeted at specific ethnic groups’ (1989:38). The persistent gap between the number of people of colour and immigrants in Canada and in the CF was remarkable, as there was virtually no change taking place in the military. This racialized labour geography of whiteness stands in sharp contrast with the American case, where the military was increasingly composed of African Americans and Latinos around this time, especially in the lower ranks.5 This speaks to the particular national historical geographies of race and class.6 Fourteen years after their initial deliberations about the low enrolment rates of racialized and immigrant groups, researchers raised the question again. Change in their ways of thinking was almost as imperceptible as changes in military diversity. This is somewhat shocking given that these fourteen years were a time of tremendous politicization of racism in Canada. Activists challenged the many forms, institutions,
Reorienting Recruitment 173 Table 5.1 Ethnic Origin Proportional Differences between Census and Applicant Data Census Ethnic Group
CFAPQ
British Origins
1,397,820
22.7
1,315
52.2
29.5
35.33*
French Origins
1,510,065
24.5
788
31.3
6.8
7.88*
464,460
7.5
3,372,145
54.7
2,103
83.5
28.8
28.96*
South/West Europe
615,540
10.0
192
7.6
2.4
3.97*
Eastern Europe
167,115
2.7
53
2.1
0.6
1.88*
East/South East Asian Origins
152,590
2.5
20
.8
1.7
5.44*
Aboriginal People
101,355
1.7
35
1.4
0.3
1.01*
70,225
1.1
8
.3
0.8
3.89*
57,230
1.0
23
.9
0.1
0.85*
85
3.4
2.2
9.87*
28.7
28.95*
Total British/French
South Asian Origins Black
a b
%
Z Score
%
British/French Multiple Responses
Number
Difference in %
Number
74,955
1.2
Non British/French Multiple Responses
1,546,605
25.1
Total Non British/ French
2,785,015
45.3
416
16.5
100%
2,519c
100%
Others
Column Totals
6,157,760
Note: The data in column 2 are from ‘Dimensions – Profile of Ethnic Groups,’ Statistics Canada, 1989, Catalogue 93–154. a Includes Caribbean single response b Includes Northern European, Latin, Central and South American, Pacific Islands, West Asian and Arab origins c Includes 17–30 year old applicants only * p < .001 Source: Canadian Forces Personnel Applied Research Unit 1989:22.
and spaces of racism. They critiqued racist police violence, racism in the judicial system, and discriminatory labour force and immigration practices. Eventually, sometimes grudgingly, various levels of government implemented equity policies throughout the 1980s, and provincial and federal funding was invested in anti-racist research and cultural
174 Military Workfare Table 5.2 Applicants’ Ethnic Origin Nationally and by Recruiting Zones Ethnic Group
National
Atlantic
Quebec
Central
Western
British
1542% 52.6%
495 75.2%
90% 11.8%
484% 66.3%
473% 60.2%
French
891% 30.4%
113% 17.2%
596% 78.5%
112% 15.4%
70% 8.9%
South/West Europe
236% 8.0%
25% 3.8%
30% 3.9%
62% 8.5%
119% 15.2%
Eastern Europe
59% 2.0%
5% 0.8%
3% 0.4%
13% 1.8%
38% 4.8%
Aboriginal
42% 1.4%
4% 0.6%
19% 2.5%
6% 0.8%
13% 1.7%
Black
25% 0.9%
6% 0.9%
6% 0.8%
12% 1.6%
1% 0.1%
East/South East Asia
24% 0.8% 9% 0.3%
2% 0.3%
4% 0.5%
8% 1.1%
10% 1.3%
0% 0.0%
0% 0.0%
6% 0.8%
3% 0.4%
105% 3.6%
8% 1.2%
12% 1.6%
27% 3.7%
58% 7.4%
2933a 100.0%
658 22.4%
760% 25.9%
730% 24.9%
785% 26.8%
South Asia Other Column Totals Note: a Missing data (178)
Chi-square = 1342.80. df = 24, p < .001 Source: Canadian Forces Personnel Applied Research Unit 1989:20.
production.7 Whether by design or passive disconnect, the wilful immunity of the military to these broader public debates is stark. The explanations researchers devise for the minimal participation of people of colour and immigrants in the CF in a 1989 report directly echo claims from 1975. They acknowledge that ‘negative stereotypes about military employment’ may exist for these groups, but attribute these to external factors such as ‘negative experiences in their native country’ or ‘more attractive opportunities than that which would be gained in the Forces’ in civilian employment (CFPARU 1989:23). Still unwilling to implicate the CF in any way for the existence of negative stereotypes, the CFPARU explains that ‘whatever the reasons, it could take several generations of acculturation before any negative stereotypes about military employment in Canada are dispelled.’
Reorienting Recruitment 175
By the early 1990s this research became more central to personnel policy and research questions more precise along with the growing seriousness of CF interest in recruiting these groups. Numbers were still an issue for the military, as was the growing ‘Human Rights climate’ (Pinch 1991). Human rights legislation was becoming an increasingly powerful force shaping the actions of the CF as it was more regularly being invoked to challenge the military’s exceptional practices in relation to employment. Human rights legislation was turning the Canadian military into an increasingly typical employer at home, and into a peacekeeping rather than war-waging force abroad. Human rights ‘observations,’ and the ‘likelihood of future human rights observations,’ pushed the CF to take its own role in the reproduction of a white labour force more seriously (CFPARU 1991a:30). Eventually, in the 1990s, the CFPARU began to consider the military’s own role in reproducing such a socially specific recruit base, and more specifically the ‘existence of systematic barriers within the CF advertising, recruiting and selection processes’ (1991b:13–14). It identified a potential problem with classification tests, which had been ‘standardized on populations comprised primarily of British and French applicants,’ and suggested that ‘non British/French ethnic minorities may be at a disadvantage.’ It proposed modifications to these practices, including ‘developing selection tests and interview schedules in languages other than English and French’ and incorporating ‘the appearance of non-British/French personnel in Trade and Lifestyle Videos (TLVs) and more ethnic recruiting staff.’ But despite these new questions and efforts the CF was still unable to make meaningful change in the recruit population. The fact that the CF was still conceptualizing ethnicity as a ‘barrier,’ and using terms such as ‘ethnics’ to identify groups, no doubt contributed to its problems. This language was disconnected from the identities that people of colour defined for themselves. In the passages quoted above and in so many other reports of this time, the military defined ‘other’ groups by lack – by what they were not rather than what they were. For example, in 1991, it persisted in identifying ‘non-British/French ethnic groups’ (CFPARU 1991a,b:30). The military’s own practices were clearly a barrier to change, but these were further compounded by the implementation of the ‘Force Reduction Plan’ in the early 1990s, spurred by defence budget cuts that came with the end of the Cold War. The Force Reduction Plan put recruitment on the back burner; the military cut costs by cutting force size, and so personnel were retired rather than recruited. The plan would end up
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exacerbating recruitment problems only a few years later. Tasseron (2001:54) explains how ‘financially, the plan was intended to achieve a quick-hit dollar return by slashing the personnel … the net result, however, was that in a space of less than three years the CF went from paying qualified individuals to leave (including some still under their initial period of obligatory service), to the point where it was suffering such acute shortages that it had to consider curtailing operations.’ Of course, this was also the time of the first Gulf War, and under the leadership of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Canada joined the U.S.-led coalition. This was the first time since the Korean War that Canadian troops had been deployed in combat operations. The first Gulf War revived concerns for defence and national security but did not have enough impact to stop the budget cuts or the Force Reduction Plan. The government would eventually commit to new investment in military recruitment in response to the return of economic growth and the tightening of labour markets but not until the situation was again desperate. These events in the early 1990s created dire conditions for recruiters. But even more important to the military’s public profile at this time was the atrocious display of extreme racism in the ranks that the world witnessed with the ‘Somalia affair.’ The ‘Somalia Affair’ In December 1992 the Canadian Airborne Regiment was deployed to Somalia as part of a UN-sanctioned, U.S.-led, Combined and Joint Task Force. A few months later on 16 March 1993, members of 2 Commando, the Canadian Airborne Regiment, tortured and beat to death Shidane Arone, a young Somali who was in their care. The violence was intensely and explicitly racist, and despite its efforts, the military could not sustain a convincing argument that this racist violence was the work of a few bad eggs. Sherene Razack (2004) has argued that these actions, and other incidents of racist violence of the Airborne Regiment in Somalia, are indicative of systemic racism in both Canadian society and in the peacekeeping missions of the Canadian military. Rather than an enlightened form of international humanitarian assistance, Razack sees the work of Canada’s peacekeepers as fundamental to a deeply racialized new imperialism. Razack writes: For a brief moment in national history, modern peacekeeping revealed its sordid colonial origins … On 15 January 1995 CBC Newsworld announced that it had obtained a videotape of Canadian Airborne Regiment soldiers
Reorienting Recruitment 177 serving in Somalia. Filmed as a holiday video, the tape showed soldiers uttering a number of racist remarks as they sat around drinking beer under the hot sun. Corporal Matt MacKay, a self-confessed neo-Nazi who said he had quit the white supremacist movement two years earlier, gleefully reported, ‘We haven’t killed enough n – yet’ … Another soldier explained that a stick is used for cracking the heads of Somalis, while another commented that the Somalis were not starving and that ‘they never work, they’re lazy, they’re slobs, and they stink.’ (2004:4–5)
Razack proceeds to describe a second shocking video release depicting ‘violent and racist hazing rituals of another unit of the Airborne Regiment during a party in Canada. In this videotape, we see a Black soldier being smeared with faeces spelling out the words “I love the KKK,” then tied to a tree and sprinkled with white flour. He is later made to crawl on all fours and to suffer a simulated sodomizing.’ This graphic violence and its public broadcast provoked outrage among the public and in Parliament, and spurred the creation of a formal task force and a string of research reports. This led to political pressure and directives for the military to seriously address racism in the ranks. A number of reports were written about the affair before the release of the final Somalia inquiry report in 1997, and a range of practices were scrutinized and reformed. For example, prior to the Somalia affair, the CF did not consider membership in a white supremacist group a problem for enrolment. In response to the serious charges of institutional racism, failed leadership, and a culture outrageously out of step with ‘Canadian values,’ the military was forced to act. However, while changes were made, the military appeared committed to change just enough to make the public look away. The number one priority remained the military’s own well-being. In fact, two scholars of radically different political persuasion have made similar arguments regarding the inadequate federal government and military response to the violence in Somalia. Both Sherene Razack, a feminist, anti-racist scholar, and J.L. Granatstein, a military historian and defence lobbyist, charge that the weight of the blame was placed on a few individuals within the CF, while the larger institutional problems were left largely intact (see Razack 2004:7; Granatstein 2004:158). Oh Canada, Our Home on Native Land A second defining incident, the ‘Oka crisis,’ lasted from 11 March to 26 September 1990. Mohawks occupied the historic Kane(h)satake
178 Military Workfare
burial ground near the town of Oka, Quebec. They created a blockade on a surrounding road in order to protect these sacred lands from a town plan to build a golf course. In solidarity, other Mohawks blockaded the Mercier Bridge on the south end of the island of Montreal. The military was deployed to the scene in numbers six times greater than its deployment in the first Gulf War,8 with numbers reaching 14,000 soldiers. The crisis marked a low point in recent relations between Aboriginals and the Canadian state. Despite the fact that the CF described its ‘work’ at Oka as a success, it nevertheless adopted a policy that explicitly instructed recruiters not to mention or discuss the events with prospective Aboriginal recruits (Edwards 2002:3). A pathetically cynical political correctness characterizes the military’s management of Aboriginal recruitment after the Oka crisis. The Canadian Forces document Strengthening Relationships between the Canadian Forces and Aboriginal People (Recruitment Guide) directs recruiters to ’avoid the following references: the conflict at Oka … The 1990 incident is still an emotional topic with many First Nations. It invokes negative images of the CF and any reference to Oka should be avoided in a First Nations setting.’ At the time of the stand-off, Aboriginal people were becoming an increasingly important target group for recruiters – hence the concern for negative images of the military. While some of the largest recent deployments of CF troops have been against Aboriginal peoples, the CF is trying to encourage more and more enlistment among Native Canadians. A 2002 Canadian Forces Recruitment Study indicates that Aboriginals are an important target group for recruiters because of three crucial factors: first, they have very low employment rates; second, they have high birth rates; and third, they have appropriate citizenship status. Furthermore, the study notes that Native people are heavily overrepresented in the ‘recruitable population’ of Canadians in the 17–24 age group. Aboriginals currently constitute 10 per cent of the 17–24 year cohort, compared to only 3 per cent of the total population that self-identified as Aboriginal in the 2001 census (McCue 1999). Aboriginal people have a long history of participation in the Canadian military. During both world wars, Native people volunteered in large numbers for service. Specialized programs to recruit Aboriginals into the CF are also long-standing. The ‘Native Peoples Development Northern Program,’ for example, was initiated in 1971 and operated with the financial support of Indian and Northern Affairs (Northern Affairs Program, Vocational Training Section). Later renamed the
Reorienting Recruitment 179
‘Northern Native Entry Program,’ the initiative was designed to attract more northern Native people to the CF and included a ‘pre-recruit Training Course’ for interested applicants ‘designed to indoctrinate interested northern-Aboriginal candidates to the southern and military cultures’ (Canada 1998e). The program managers acknowledged that ‘these people would be unlikely to remain for long periods in the Forces, but the objective was to afford them an opportunity to undergo training,’ understood by the military as a ‘contribution to the participation of Canada’s indigenous people in an element of Canadian society.’9 As part of this initiative, the military deployed small ‘recruiting mobiles’ to remote destinations. These teams of recruiting mobiles consisted of military ‘attractors,’ sometimes a Canadian Ranger, and recently also a Native elder ‘to assist with the bridging process in communities.’ Recruiting directives from the late 1990s recommend spending ‘at least three full days in each community, visiting each community annually,’ as well as providing ‘continuity in Recruiters as a personal relationship is expected before “business” can be conducted’ (Canada 1998e). In 1981 destinations for recruiting mobiles included Churchill, Rankin Inlet, Baker Lake, Eskimo Point, Frobisher Bay, Fort Chimo, Payne Bay, Suglouc, Fort Smith, Hay River, Yellowknife, Cambridge Bay, Coppermine, Holman, Sacks Harbour, and Inuvik. The program, and its goal of ‘integrating’ Aboriginals into Canadian society, was a far cry from a success. In 1982 only 19 of 109 recruits stayed on, while the remaining 90 were released from the CF. Of these 19 recruits, 75 per cent were released as a result of an ‘inability to resolve the conflict between his native lifestyle and the lifestyle of the Canadian Forces.’10 In fact, over the first decade of the program, a grand total of only twenty-nine recruits stayed on for a second year of service, and only five recruits were retained by the fifth year. More recently, the combination of recruiting shortages and concerns about race in the CF has led personnel policy staff to revisit and expand targeted programs for Aboriginals. For example, the ‘Bold Eagle Program’ was initiated in 1988 as a partnership between the Department of National Defence, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, and First Nations organizations from western Canada. The program offers Native youth a five-day traditional culture camp led by elders and then six weeks of basic training with the option to stay on as a reservist. Other initiatives include the Canadian Forces Aboriginal Entry Program, the Sergeant Tommy Prince Initiative, and the Canadian Rangers.11 Still today, Aboriginal people are sharply underrepresented in the Canadian
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Forces, and their recruitment is managed under the banner and staff infrastructure of ‘EE’ or ‘employment equity’ groups. Problematizing Universal Masculinity? Before moving to a more contemporary analysis of these trends, a brief history of women in the military, the third group governed under the EE banner, is necessary. I have already outlined some ways in which the labour force was changing in the 1970s, not only in terms of occupational restructuring and the shifting orientations of workers, but also with regard to the very people who were working. In addition to the growing ethno-racial diversity of Canadian workers, women were also, once again, becoming an important segment of the formal labour force. While women’s wages lagged far behind men’s, and discrimination was persistent both in institutionalized norms and the dispersed practices of individual employers and colleagues, it was nonetheless impossible to ignore the fact that women were fighting these imposed limitations with increasing fervour. Women were also simply becoming a greater and greater proportion of workers in Canada. In 1953 only 23.4 per cent of Canadian women were a part of the formal labour force, but the figure climbed to 48.9 per cent by 1979 (Bédard and Grignon 2000; Ostry and Zaidi 1979). Popular perceptions of what constituted ‘women’s work’ expanded from post-war assumptions of domestic labour in male-headed households. Fierce feminist struggle may not have quite yielded a revolution in social order, but women were increasingly accepted as autonomous liberal worker-citizens in their own right. In response to these changing norms of women and work, some officers within the CF became intrigued by the possibility of expanding their potential recruitment base so greatly. The volatility and overall scarcity of male recruits led researchers to look to women. In 1978 the CFPARU declared that ‘the female population of military age must be seen as an under-utilized segment of the potential manpower pool’ (CFPARU 1978). And yet, women faced a powerful barrier. According to dominant cultural attitudes, particularly those within the military, women were not soldiers. This was in part the historical product of the model of male breadwinner worker-citizenship, but it was also the product of the particular history of highly gendered violence that characterizes military work. Military models of masculinity have historically been built around the suppression of femininity and the objectification of women.
Reorienting Recruitment 181
While these models vary at different times, in different nations, and even across different services in the same nation, extreme forms of masculinity combined with pervasive sexual violence are a common glue of military culture. Cynthia Enloe (1990:74) has described the heavily gendered violence associated with military masculinities at length. She argues that soldiers often come to see women as deeply threatening to the ‘modern warrior’ identity. War itself has historically been imagined as a form of sexual conquest, where a feminized landscape or a feminized people are overcome through forceful invasion. Indeed, as Seifert (1992) argues, ‘“conquests” are made both on the battlefield and in the bedroom; the British press called the German occupation of Belgium at the beginning of the First World War the “rape of Belgium,” just as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was dubbed “the rape of Kuwait.” In German military parlance, the infantryman’s rifle is his “Braut” (fiancée or bride).’ Sexual violence is not only a metaphor for war but also a pervasive feature of military violence. This violence includes the use of rape on a mass scale as a deliberate strategy of warfare, as in the recent genocide in Rwanda where 250,000 women were documented as having been raped by soldiers (Jefferson 2004).12 But the use of rape as a weapon of warfare has a long and global history as well. During the occupation of Nanking in 1937, Japanese troops were reported to have raped thousands of women, and during the 1971 battle for Bangladeshi independence, Pakistani troops raped at least 200,000 Bengali women. Systemic sexual violence was documented in Vietnam, where gang rape became a common activity of American soldiers. Tremendous violence has been reported in the communities surrounding military bases abroad as well. In Okinawa, Japan, for instance, girls as young as nine years old have experienced rape and gang rape by U.S. military personnel. Soldiers returning from war are notorious for committing acts of domestic and sexual violence at home. Wives, partners, children, and members of local communities are often subjected to the violence of the battlefield in this spatially mediated way. Spousal and family violence is a pervasive problem in military communities in Canada and internationally, and these rates of abuse tend to soar immediately when soldiers return from active duty (Harrison and Laliberté 1994). Nevertheless, despite these powerful histories of gendered violence, women have worked in the Canadian military as ‘nursing sisters’ since 1885, and they served en masse during both world wars, with over 50,000 enlisted in the Second World War. Women have also enlisted in the military continuously since 1951, albeit in small numbers, as I
182 Military Workfare Figure 5.1 Number of Male and Female in the CF, 1972-1992 Number ofFigure Male5.1 and Female Officers in the Officers CF, 1972–1992 14000
Number of Personnel
12000 10000 8000
Men Women
6000 4000 2000 0 1972 1974 1976 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 Year
Source: Canada 1992b:3.
outlined in Chapter 2. During the 1950s and 1960s a cap on women’s enrolment kept their numbers at or below 1,500, or the equivalent of around 2 per cent of Forces strength. Gradually, in the decades since then, a wider range of military occupations were opened up. The 1969 Royal Commission on the Status of Women sparked major change in the role of women in the military. The commission recommended lifting all barriers to women’s employment and made a total of 167 recommendations for changes considered ‘necessary to provide a climate of equal opportunity for women in Canada,’ six of which pertained to women in the Canadian Forces (Royal Commission, quoted in CFPARU 1996a:6–7). In response to these recommendations, military occupations were opened to women, with the important exception of combat and combat support roles. This was ‘well below the recommendation to open all occupations to women’ made by the Royal Commission (Pinch 1987:15), but it did mean that new areas of employment were available to women beyond the traditional (khaki) pink-collar ghetto, which had limited their employment ‘to support roles such as medical and dental’ (Canada 1992b:1). Existing regulations that forced women who got married or pregnant to resign were also rescinded after the
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commission report, and basic maternity benefits were introduced (Canada 1992b; Pinch 1987). But despite lifting legal barriers to many occupations in the CF, women still tended to concentrate in a few support occupations. In 1977 the vast majority of female non-commissioned members (NCMs) worked in only three trades: administrative clerk, supply technician, and finance clerk. By 1990 the majority of female NCMs were found in only four trades: the above with the addition of ‘mobile support equipment operator.’ This minor change in women’s military occupations stood in contrast to the major jump in their numbers. Following aggressive recruitment campaigns, ‘female officers in the CF almost tripled, and female NCMs more than doubled’ (Canada 1992b:3). Over the course of the 1980s, various task forces worked to redefine a viable rationale for the continued exclusion of women from the full range of military occupations, while new and stronger equity legislation was introduced. The Canadian Human Rights Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms were brought into force in 1982 and 1985 respectively. These charters prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, national/ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex (including pregnancy and childbirth), marital status, family status, pardoned conviction, and physical or mental disability. However, not all of these criteria apply in the military. The CF is exempt from enlisting people with physical disabilities, for example, or hiring for positions with an officially termed ‘Bona Fide Occupational Requirement’ (BFOR). Human rights legislation does not apply in cases where the integrity of a position would be jeopardized. After a five-year trial employment of women, BFORs could not be demonstrated, and the Chief of Defence Staff issued a directive to lift the remaining bans. But despite this massive restructuring of military organization and culture, the CF was slow to take up proactive change with regard to women in the Forces. While the CFPARU had recommended recruiting more women in the 1970s, the expansion of women’s roles was controversial. Conflict over the issue of women in the combat arms was particularly intense between progressives and ‘traditionalists’ within the military (Cotton 2004; Pinch 2004). A strong traditionalist ‘warrior culture’ dominates core parts of the military leadership and was averse to expanding women’s roles (Cotton 2004). Struggles between these groups meant that it was not until January 1989 that all remaining restrictions on women’s employment except submarine duty and Roman Catholic Chaplaincy were lifted (CFPARU 1996a:10).
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These same traditionalists would later oppose the open presence of homosexuals in the military. Homosexuals have long been members of the Canadian Forces, as Kinsman and Gentile’s important scholarship has shown (Kinsman and Gentile 1998). However, the right of homosexuals to be employed without their sexual practices or identities concealed was not a given. This right was only institutionalized following a long struggle against the traditionalists. Since October 1992, homosexuals have been openly employed in the CF. The military made efforts to uphold the ban, but it was unable to make a strong enough case to convince the Human Rights Tribunal. This political resistance to change combined with myriad practical barriers to the full incorporation of women, including base housing and uniform design, which repeatedly delayed the implementation of change. Not surprisingly, these practical barriers relate directly to differences, perceived and actual, in gendered bodies, and serve as a very clear reminder of both the materiality and particularity of the ‘universal’ masculine citizen. Resistance to change within the military meant that virtually all the formal changes that have taken place with regard to women’s employment in the military have occurred as a result of legislative order by the courts and federal government. Nevertheless, Canada is considered an international leader in the area of gender integration in the military (Pinch 2004). In 1997 the military proudly proclaimed that the ‘CF is a world leader in terms of the proportion of women in its military, and the areas in which they can serve. While the United States has a slightly higher representation, about 12%, women are still excluded from direct combat roles. Norway, like Canada, has opened all areas to women, but women only make up 3% of their military’ (Canada 1997d). The Department of National Defence ‘provides support to the Minister’s Advisory Board on Gender Integration in the Canadian Forces, and is a member of the Status of Women Canada–sponsored Working Group on Gender Equality.’ A special report devoted to the status of women in the Canadian military further asserts that nations ‘that are wrestling with womenin-combat issues, including Australia, Chile, Germany, Peru, the United Kingdom, and the United States, often call upon the Department as a resource on gender-integration issues.’ Canada is also a member of the Committee on Women in NATO Forces. This committee draws together representatives of NATO-member forces to address the issues facing women in the various armed services. The CF has been a leading participant on this committee since its inception in 1988 (Canada 1997d). Thus, while there was a strong human resource rationale for bringing women into the service as early as 1978, it is only more recently
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that the military started to develop proactive policies for women out of its own recruiting needs and out of forceful directives from civilian government. Eventually, the combination of recruitment pressures and changing legislation meant that the military had to devote serious attention to the recruitment of women. Following the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, targets for women’s enrolment were set to reach 8,000 to 10,000 members by 1981, or approximately 10 per cent of the Forces. In a general statement on the future of recruitment issued in 1985, CFPARU researchers insisted that ‘without forward-looking recruiting strategies and personnel policies the CF runs a real risk of suffering a strategic self-inflicted wound. The policy areas which require urgent review in order to forestall this eventuality include … redefining the eligible manpower pool, which would minimally entail the removal of age barriers, the expansion of women’s roles, and the development of lateral-entry programs for skilled applicants.’ The 1990s were a watershed for new initiatives in the area of women’s recruitment, and this provoked major institutional reorganization. In 1990 the Department of National Defence formed an advisory board on women in the Canadian Forces (later renamed the Minister’s Advisory Board on Gender Integration) to monitor this process. The DND also initiated the ‘Defence Diversity Council’ made up of senior leaders from both the DND and the CF. The Diversity Council’s long-term mandate is ‘to determine the strategic approaches to be taken by the Department and the CF in recruiting, training, promoting and retaining women, members of visible minority groups and Aboriginals’ (Canada 1997d). The expansion of women’s recruiting initiatives dovetailed with the personnel shortages following the Force Reduction Plan. In the 1990s the CF adopted a targeted recruiting campaign ‘showing women in all CF roles’ with the goal of attracting ‘more women to a career in the CF, particularly in the combat arms’ (Canada 1997d). An important 1997 planning document for the campaign, worth scrutinizing in some detail, outlines the need to ‘publicize positive results of CF harassment cases, increase female participation at high profile and media events, develop a “Heritage Canada” type vignette or short film on women in the CF to be shown prior to the main movie feature in theatres, encourage female military sport teams to play in female civilian sport leagues, have a travel group of high profile servicewomen in non-traditional occupations talk to high school, college and university women, give presentations to university students in women/gender studies courses, educate university professors in
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appropriate faculties of the history of women in the CF, do presentations to children from kindergarten through grade 8 on the CF and highlight the employment of servicewomen, submit articles on servicewomen to high school papers … ’13 Target audiences identified for the recruitment campaign include all-girls’ schools, lesbian groups, Girl Guides, Big Sisters, guidance counsellor associations, and the unemployed. The document also outlines various forums appropriate for CF gender-specific recruitment campaigns. Here it suggests that recruiters ‘target female magazines, general magazines with advertisements and ensure women are presented appropriately’ but, in ways reminiscent of the campaigns from the 1950s, the CF stresses, so ‘that there are not compromises to their femininity.’ A military-style Barbie doll, a ‘Canadian equivalent of G.I. Jane,’ is another suggested avenue, as is the possibility of asking Canada Post to issue a stamp commemorating 100 years of military service by women.14 The same document outlines a range of messages and slogans for CF advertising. Based on surveys of women in the Forces, the document advises that ‘stability with regard to job benefits and pension … equal pay between men and women … education opportunities,’ and ‘good maternity benefits’ should all be emphasized in the media campaign. A long list of options for slogans is proposed, all of which emphasize personal achievement: Tired of Office Work? Join a Proven Team. Discover your potential. Discover your maximum potential. Be more than you can be. Be more than you thought you could be. Develop your mind. Train your body. Develop your mind. Challenge your body. Challenge your mind. Develop your body. Discover your inner strength. (Re)discover your inner strength.15
The document further proposes a list of repetitive concepts for television commercials. It describes how a series of commercials could be developed showing change from a little girl’s activities and interests to related CF employment as an adult:
Reorienting Recruitment 187 1. A little girl playing in the mud (or covered with it) then as an adult female soldier dirty and camouflaged holding a rifle; 2. A little girl climbing a tree and then as a Linesman climbing a pole; 3. A little girl building with Lego or wooden blocks then as a Field Engineer building a bridge; 4. A little girl flying a kite then as an adult pilot flying a CF 18; 5. A little girl playing with a truck then as an adult Crewman driving a tank …
The list takes up more than a page of the report. In contrast to the earlier warning, these seem hardly concerned with compromised ‘femininity.’ Another important document issued as part of the planning for increased women’s enrolment considers institutional and policy changes in contrast to the focus on recruitment strategies. It evaluates initiatives such as ‘providing greater geographical stability for women in the CF,’ to publishing ‘personnel Newsletter articles about issues of concern to women and about successful women in the CF,’ and those encouraging ‘flexible working arrangements to facilitate child care’ (Canada 1994:16). I address military efforts to address ‘quality of work’ and ‘quality of life’ more fully in the next chapter, but I mention them here because they are indicative of the scale of effort involved in reorienting recruitment. That the military would contemplate disrupting occupational structure is indicative of the seriousness of this goal. Poor retention levels persisted among women in the 1990s, and the number of women in the Forces even declined. This pushed the military to make more inquiries. With painfully little awareness of the systemic violence and discrimination that was part of daily life for many women in the Forces, the CFPARU decided to ‘conduct an attitudinal study to determine the existence and extent of possible barriers which may exist for women in the CF,’ which ‘might identify negative attitudes and behaviours’ (Canada 1994:16). This mild language is shocking when contrasted with the actually existing conditions of servicewomen. In one widely reported incident in 1992, for instance, Canada’s first female infantry officer, Captain Sandra Perron, was tied to a tree, beaten, and left barefoot for two hours in the sub-zero snow during a training exercise. A shocking number of sexual assaults in the military have also made headlines across the country. In 1998 Maclean’s magazine presented a special investigative report on the rape of servicewomen, including twenty-seven alleged rapes of young female cadets at a Cadet Summer Training Camp at Base Borden in Ontario.
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Despite these clear indications of persistent misogyny, some things were indeed changing in the military. The number of women serving in the Canadian Forces has increased from 2 per cent of personnel in 1971 to about 10 or 11 per cent today. Women now constitute a much larger proportion of the reserve component, where they are around 18 per cent of reserve strength. In addition to the rise in enlistment and the opening of different occupational streams, the final barriers to women’s employment were dismantled following the 1997/8 implementation of employment equity legislation. This legislation spurred even more changes in military organization and work practices, and prompted expansion of targeted recruitment infrastructure. An Economy of Difference: ‘EE’ Groups Costs and Benefits of Diversity: Diversity management comes with costs and one of them is that it adds significant complexity to leadership and management roles and the systems that have to support them. (Pinch 2005:7) Many misconceptions about the meaning of ‘uniformity’ in a military context can easily be translated so as to undermine the essence of diversity. (CF 1999)16
The Employment Equity Act, Bill C-64, was originally proclaimed in 1986 but was subsequently amended in 1996 to include the federal Public Service and so too the Canadian Forces. The act addresses barriers to employment faced by women, Aboriginal people, members of a visible minority group, and persons with disabilities. As an ‘employer’ under the act, the CF must comply with EE regulations and is liable for an audit by the Canadian Human Rights Commission.17 EE regulations specific to the CF were approved by the governor-in-council in November 2002. Military EE aimed to meet the dual demands of changing legislations and reorienting recruiting practices. ‘Employment equity is not only the law and the “right thing to do,”‘ a recent personnel newsletter reports, ‘it is an important part of the CF’s human resources and recruiting strategy in the face of changing Canadian demographics’ (Canada 2003b). In response to the new legislation, the CF initiated an entire research and recruiting agenda for ‘EE groups.’ Most important, in 1999 the CF crafted its own Employment Equity Plan, which set new targets for EE
Reorienting Recruitment 189 Table 5.3 Actual and Targeted Representation, Regular Force and Primary Reserve, 1997 Women
Aboriginals
Visible Minorities
Actual Representation
13.4%
1.3%
2.1%
Minimum (target)
28%
3%
9%
Source: Canada 1999:20.
groups in the armed forces. Aggressive recruiting targets were set for the regular force of 28 per cent for women, 9 per cent for ‘visible minorities,’ and 3 per cent for Aboriginals. When these targets were set, the actual numbers for each of these groups were not even half of the target numbers. In its opening pages, the landmark plan explains the primary purpose: ‘to maximize human potential’ (Canada 1999:6). It describes how ‘in the year 2000, 80% of people entering the workforce will be designated group members (DGMs)’ and warns that if CF policies do not encourage ‘DGMs’ to enlist, the CF will face a dramatically reduced labour pool from which to draw recruits. This would also see ‘increased costs through a higher turnover of service members whose opportunities were limited and whose needs were not met. Consequently, EE is about maintaining and enhancing operational effectiveness’ (Canada 1999:7; emphasis in original). Thus, while these new equity practices and targets for diverse enrolment emerged out of imposed legislation, the military would come to rationalize these moves as essential for future survival. Targeting Cities and Racialized Citizens If you are going to recruit within various communities, you have to tailor the message.18
In 1972 Coulombe wrote that the geography of military personnel in Canada provided the ‘truest picture’ of the military’s social recruitment, and the same might be said today. The patterns and their meanings would be different but their contours no less stark. In fact, the geography of recruits that was documented in the 1970s and discussed in the last chapter still deeply informs patterns in the present.
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These urban/rural and regional patterns of economic, cultural, and social development in Canada have only intensified since that time. These patterns have also been deepened by the global and local reterritorializations of economy and population that were in their infancy three decades ago. The tremendous rise in global migration, the movement of industry to low-wage and non-union regions of the country and the world, the ‘rescaling’ of citizenship, the emergence of ‘global cities,’ and the questioning of national identification and the nation state have all become definitive, increasingly powerful geographical conditions, each addressed in sprawling public debates and academic literatures. The role of cities in all this change cannot be underestimated. As countless scholars have argued, this era of globalization is simultaneously an era of global urbanization. One group of global cities in the advanced capitalist world have become the key nodes for financing, managing, designing, and servicing transnational flows of ideas, materials, and people, while another group of cities, largely in the global south, are increasingly home to the world’s lowwage production (Sassen 1991; Keil and Leiser 1992). Global cities of the first kind are said to attract the vast majority of the world’s international migrants. Canada has actively reoriented immigration policy to attract ‘the brightest and best’ for permanent settlement, and the cheapest and easiest to work as unfree labourers in temporary migration programs. Global migration levels are reaching record levels, with UN estimates that 175 million people are annually crossing international borders as migrants (Sharma 2006:145). Canadian cities have become the settlement place of the clear majority of the country’s new immigrants. In fact, more than 70 per cent settle in the three largest cities: Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. This entwined local and global change is directly impacting the politics of nation and nationalism. In an influential piece on the growing significance of cities for citizenship, Holston and Appadurai (1999:3) claim that there is a growing ‘wedge between national space and urban centres.’ By this they mean that the social life of cities and their political and cultural norms are increasingly diverging from hegemonic national politics and culture. The implications for belonging and security are severe. In an era of globalization and the intensification of networks of global cities, the allegiance of urban citizens to ‘host’ nations cannot necessarily be presumed. Jerry Harris, writing for the U.S. Institute for National Strategic Studies, suggests that globalization is producing a particular class, which he terms the ‘yuppie internationale’ (2002:8). Harris quotes another author, who complains,
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‘The privileged classes have ceased to think of themselves as Americans in any important sense. Patriotism, certainly, does not rank very high on their hierarchy of virtues. Their loyalties are international.’19 Harris distinguishes his ‘yuppie internationale’ – a group of ‘neoliberal globalists’ – from the ‘military globalists,’ who maintain a much greater identification with the nation state, and he traces their ties to competing political and economic projects. A recasting of the political space and scaled power of cities has been particularly powerful in Canada (Peck 1998). Canada is one of the most urbanized countries on earth and is also a place where a handful of large, multicultural urban centres stand in strong social, economic, and cultural contrast to the surrounding rural areas. An urban/rural divide has been documented in a wide variety of literatures and has even recently been described as the dominant political conflict in Canada, displacing French/English and regional divides (Economist 2003), as I mentioned earlier. Meanwhile, the geography of recruits is still overwhelmingly rural and from declining regions. Today, over a quarter of troops in Afghanistan come from Newfoundland and Labrador, which makes up only 1.7 per cent of Canada’s population. Only a fifth of personnel come from a large city of over 500,000, whereas for civilians that figure is more than half. Smaller cities were home to 31 per cent of soldiers prior to their enlistment, but are home to only 14 per cent of Canadian civilians.20 Morton (2003:120) writes that the Canadian Forces ‘should reflect the society they defend, but most members come from small towns and the poorer provinces, places where other jobs are scarce and local values are often more congenial to military life than those of big metropolitan areas like Toronto and Vancouver.’ This geographical gap both produces and reflects other kinds of differences, for example, in political orientation. More specifically, this highly particular labour geography converges with shocking levels of cultural ignorance and racism. The CF (Canada 2001e) has begun to document these attitudes in its own participatory research on employment equity: ‘If they (visible minorities) don’t want to abide by our traditions, they should have never come here.’ – Lieutenant, CFB Gagetown ‘What do you call these people again? Negroes? Coloureds?’ – Captain, WATC
192 Military Workfare ‘What next? Ration packs for vegetarians, for Hindus, for Jews, for people who hate peas … The next thing you know we’ll all be eating green eggs and ham.’ – Master-Corporal – Wainwright ‘All this immigration must stop. We are diluting the Canadian population with all these immigrants and can’t even recognize ourselves anymore.’ – RMC student, 2000
The report further asserts that the kinds of statements quoted above ‘are reflective of many similar comments heard during visits to several units, bases and training centers, particularly in Land Forces Command’ (Canada 2001e). Many of the officer cadets I encountered while teaching at the Royal Military College in 2003, the vast majority of whom were white, claimed to have never had any extended interactions with people of colour. In a module on immigration in my regional geography course, it became clear that many students assumed that all people of colour were newcomers to Canada. This conflation of immigration status and ‘race’ or ethnicity that I addressed in the context of personnel research often contributed to explicitly racialized notions of social entitlement. White Canadians were imagined as ‘real’ Canadians, and thus more entitled than supposed newcomers. The racism of military personnel has ties to their own geographies – both actual and imagined. The vast majority of my students, themselves from small towns and rural areas, expressed strong anti-urban sentiments. These were rationalized according to the populations they imagined living there: welfare cheats and terrorists, on the one hand, and the powerful politicians and elites that neglected noble military’s needs, on the other. These same cadets imagined rural and small-town space as authentic, simple, and white. This ideology of rural authenticity suggests a particularly military script of longstanding, popular associations between the pastoral and national space. Leo Marx’s classic (1964) account of the ‘machine in the garden’ recounts the work of the U.S. pastoral ideal in valorizing the rural and constituting the city as perverse and unnatural. In Canada, ideologies of the rural have served to deny both urban images of national identity and Aboriginal presence on the land in favour of images of ‘empty’ landscape open for European settlement or solitude. Rural space is important to contemporary militarism insofar as it shapes military labour geography, but the rural is also central to a powerful cultural discourse that identifies it as the authentic space of patriotic militarism (Cowen 2007b).
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The federal government commanded the CF to recruit more people from racialized groups, but this was also a means of potentially getting around the growing divide between the skilled, ‘creative,’ cosmopolitan, and immigrant urban Canada and the declining and relatively homogeneous rural base. In fact, the CF noted that in addition to being heavily concentrated in the nation’s big cities, immigrants who applied to the CF also had much higher levels of education and training than other applicants (Canada 1998d). Thus, in an ongoing attempt to expand the recruitment base, the Forces became social geographers. The CF now recognizes that in order to increase recruitment in immigrant communities it needs to do outreach in large urban centres. The 2001 report on gender integration and employment equity outlines how in order to initiate partnerships with diverse communities ‘senior outreach program coordinators with community partnership development skills are necessary in large metropolitan regions, such as Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and other communities with large visible minority and Aboriginal populations’ (Canada 2001e). The National Military and the Global Good The CF has also come to understand that the immigrant groups it now targets may have allegiances to other places. In an intriguing memo, the CF (Canada 1998e) outlines the need ‘for a structured national advertising campaign that “speaks” to Canada’s multicultural society and celebrates diversity.’ It is significant that, here, ‘Caucasian North Americans’ are conceptualized as a distinct cultural group rather than the assumed norm, and the memo explains that the ‘campaign requires culturally sensitive slogan and text, and imagery representative and supportive of the needs of Canada’s diverse population. Caucasian North Americans, as a culture, differ dramatically from all major cultural groups (Latino/a, Arab, African, and Asian) with regard to almost all of the cultural value orientations, and in particular the individual/collective orientation.’ Thus, along with a new conceptualization of the situation, the crux of the campaign message has also changed. The Canadian military, it is suggested, should be presented not simply as a proud Canadian institution but as a force for global good: In order to attract people from Canada’s diverse cultures who for many have come to Canada to escape military oppression, this campaign needs to focus on the greater well-being of all. A campaign that highlights Canada’s proud commitment to peacekeeping/making, aide to civil power,
194 Military Workfare and assistance during times of national disasters (national and global) should be considered. Slogans such as ‘Honour Canada, Serve the Global Community,’ or ‘Serving Canada. Serving the Global Community’ will convey a collective message. The campaign’s focus will position the CF as a truly national institution, reflecting our diversity from coast to coast, and supporting planetary social values, particularly community (cultural, local, national, global and defence), citizenry, and career opportunity.
Recruiters and recruits alike reiterate this feature of Canadian military belonging and nationalism. Lieutenant Liu, ‘Diversity Officer’ at the Canadian Forces Recruiting Centre in Toronto, explains that they are ‘not changing people’s conception about their cultural background … We actually encourage them to keep them. But once you put on the uniform, you’re part of a team. You’re working to protect the country’ (Miguel 2003). In the same article, CF member Private Dich reiterates a form of layered nationalism: ‘I consider myself Chinese first and Canadian second, I guess, because I was brought up in Canada but my roots are Chinese.’ The Canadian Forces recruiting group has recently set aside $2.24 million for outreach programs as part of its recent Diversity Plan. The CF has also created an ethno-racially specific recruitment infrastructure. According to Sergeant Huf Mullick, the ‘South Asian Recruiting Coordinator’ in Vancouver, recruiting more visible minorities in the ranks is ‘a matter of survival – the military’s survival’ (Mehfil 2003). The CF has also been busy scripting a more inclusive, multicultural military history. Contemporary recruiting strategies emphasize the traditions of various target groups in the military in order to provide a sense of connection, tradition, and belonging (Canada 1997a,b). The navy produced its own proud narrative of the important role of women in that service: ‘Women have been an integral part of the Canadian Navy since 1942. They have forged a tradition of proud service, and dedication to duty in both war and peace. Although denied sea duty in the Naval Reserve for the first 38 years, women have been assigned to sea duty in the Naval Reserve since the late seventies and the first women served at sea as members of a Regular Force ship’s company in 1980’ (Canada 1998a). The recent report ‘Canada’s Army: We Stand on Guard for Thee’ recounts a long and unified Canadian military history, which surprisingly includes Aboriginal warrior traditions without any significant break in the historical narrative. Canadian military traditions apparently ‘begin in the distant past with the warrior traditions of Canada’s aboriginal peoples, continue through the period of European
Reorienting Recruitment 195
settlement, and mark our evolution from dependent colony to selfgoverning nation’ (Canada 1998b:6). These histories include accounts of racism, homophobia, and gender-based discrimination, but in terms that utterly refuse responsibility for the military’s social and physical violence. In the EE plan, for example, the history of commitment to employment equity is described as ‘somewhat passive.’ ‘Somewhat passive’ seems to radically under-describe the history of capping women’s enrolment, persecuting homosexuals, civilizing ‘Indians,’ infantilizing Francophones, and the widespread disengagement with different groups and persistent denial of racism in the ranks. In addition to reorienting recruiting campaigns, the CF has also expanded all of its recruiting efforts and infrastructure to meet urgent and changing personnel needs. A budget of $15.2 million has been earmarked for a recruiting drive aimed at boosting ranks by 10,000 over three years. Various figures have been reported regarding actual personnel expansion goals, and these continue to change along with the members elected to federal government and the status of Canada’s military involvement in Afghanistan. Captain Johnathan Diderich of the Vancouver Recruiting Unit reports that the current ‘recruiting drive is designed to return Canada’s armed forces to the 90,000-member level of the early 1990s. By the mid 90s, the number had shrunk to about 60,000’ (Vancouver Province 2002). Since 1999, the number of staff working in recruiting offices and on recruitment issues has grown from 670 to over a thousand (Canada 2003b). In addition to this expansion, the CF is opening new offices and renovating existing facilities. This is all a part of its goal to ‘better serve our clients and to ensure we look the part of an “employer of choice,”’ so that the CF might compete ‘successfully with private sector companies [which] begins with positive first impressions.’ The awareness of strong competition from the private sector and the desire to attract highly educated candidates has led the CF to offer extra incentives for enlistment. The CF offers signing bonuses to people with a postsecondary education and trade or technical experience, ranging from $10,000 to $40,000 for engineers (Vancouver Province 2002). Doctors can take advantage of a whopping $250,000 signing bonus since 2002 (Globe and Mail 2002). The effects of these efforts on recruitment are unclear. Certainly the CF has achieved a much greater public presence in the opening years of the twenty-first century. Ads for military careers featuring diverse and dynamic Canadians appear in magazines and on television, in
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Image Not Available
Plate 5.3 ‘The Diverse Military of the Future?’ Source: Canada, Department of National Defence 2002a. ‘Military HR 2020: Facing the People Challenges of the Future.’ Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, Ottawa.
newspapers, and inside public washroom stalls. The military also seems to be making some inroads into better relations with particular groups, such as Sikhs, with their long traditions of militarism (Mehfil 2003). Overall results, however, appear mixed. The Toronto Star referred to the CF as recently as May 2002 as an ‘employer of last resort’ and reported that in the previous year the military had recruited only 3,655 personnel when targets were set at 4,800 (Toronto Star 2002). The vast majority of Canadians see the military as a sexist and racist institution (Victoria Times-Colonist 2002). On the other hand, in the same year, the CF was recruiting record numbers of women (Calgary Herald 2002). A new member of the Forces, Betty Lou Crouse, explained her enlistment in this way: ‘I used to be in telemarketing and have had people yelling at me before. I’m a pretty tough person’ (Calgary Herald 2002). The same newspaper article explains that ‘women make up 20 percent of the recruits currently going through basic training at St Jean, [Quebec] … The notion of a steady, well-paying job is
Reorienting Recruitment 197
one of the biggest factors – especially in Atlantic Canada, which has signed about a quarter of all recruits, both male and female, from across the country.’ However, despite some optimistic reports, the military’s own research reveals only modest improvements in the numbers of women and people of colour in the Forces. The military’s ‘workforce-diversity record has improved, but the numbers are skewed by inclusion of the reserves, which attract a larger share of underrepresented groups’ (Ottawa Citizen 2003). Reserve service may be far from a full-time job, but it does offer pay, some benefits, skills training, and a sense of membership to people who remain in their own communities. Indeed, women make up 25 per cent of reserves but only 12.3 per cent of regular forces. Likewise, representation of ‘visible minorities’ in the reserves is more than double the regular force strength, at 8 per cent and 3.1 per cent respectively. This is largely because of the dramatic change in lifestyle demanded by enlistment in the regular forces, which requires that personnel leave their home community, live on or near a base, and remain highly mobile for the tenure of their service. Furthermore, most bases are in rural areas or smaller cities and towns, which tend to be far more ethno-racially homogeneous than Canadian cities – thus potentially adding additional challenges for people of colour. The demand of mobility can be especially challenging for people with children and other family obligations, or strong ties to a local community. The future of recruitment remains deeply in question. The internal initiatives of the CF to boost and diversify enlistment are important. However, as with earlier conjunctures, the broader national and international politics of war, work, and welfare will play a definitive part in the prospects of military citizenship.
6 The Military after Discipline
Within much of modern Western society, the complementary agendas of humanist reform and social emancipation begun in the 1960s are colliding with the forces of increasing corporatism, economic globalization and mass culture. This collision is taking place in an increasingly challenging demographic climate, where public and private organizations are competing for ever scarcer, high-quality human resources. Western military forces are caught in the midst of this ‘revolution in social affairs’ as much as they are implicated in the Revolution in Military Affairs.1
If the targeting of ‘different’ groups for recruitment was the military’s first tactical response to this ‘revolution in social affairs,’ a second and equally important strategy saw the restructuring of the armed forces itself. Alongside efforts to change its workforce, the CF aimed to change the very nature of military work. The goal of the CFPARU, as ever, was to expand the appeal of military employment for potential recruits and to improve job satisfaction among existing personnel to temper attrition. The decline in the material rewards for military work, of pay and benefits, was a key factor in its eroding appeal. But so too was the changing nature of young workers’ expectations in the 1970s. Military work was notoriously rigid, disciplinary, and hierarchical, and offered little in the way of transferable skills training.2 These qualities were increasingly prohibitive in a context where individual empowerment, learning, mobility, and creativity were emerging as celebrated occupational characteristics for a more educated labour force in a strong economy. Changing work cultures were associated with the younger generation of workers that constituted
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the military’s recruit base. Additionally troubling was the relative flexibility of civilian employers to reform work culture and organizational structure. Could a military even operate out of flattened hierarchies, individual autonomy, and democracy? In this chapter I outline the Canadian military’s frustrated attempts to reform military work and life in response to broad shifts in the desires and orientations of workers and in dominant (civilian) human resource discourses and practices. I begin with an examination of ‘Quality of Working Life’ (QWL) initiatives, which emerged in thinktanks and private sector employers in the 1970s and which the military attempted, clumsily, to reproduce. Efforts to reform hierarchy at work and to do away with the very disciplinary technologies that have their origins in the modern military were ironic in this context and generally resulted in failure. QWL was not simply a project concerned with the workplace. With its central attention to elevating the active and responsible individual subject it was also an important element of emerging neoliberal governmentalities. Military efforts in this area therefore tell us much about the simultaneous centrality and incompatibility of the military in neoliberal political logics. In the second part of the chapter, I shift to an analysis of another military strategy to reform work that has been important since the 1990s. ‘Quality of Life’ (in contrast to Quality of Working Life) emerged in a wide range of civilian political projects and in the work of diverse social agencies and actors as a post-welfarist means of governing the social. Quality of Life has gradually been naturalized. It is deployed as a seemingly transparent and self-evident means of assessing the value of individual and social life for a given population or community. ‘Quality of Life’ (QoL), however, authorizes particular actors, measures of value, forms of knowledge, and spaces of government. In its civilian incarnation, QoL discourse defines a vast range of projects – from the punitive and revanchist to the rehabilitative and participatory – but they are united by their elevation of qualitative over quantitative measures and governance over government. Ironically, the military’s mobilization of Quality of Life has appeared much more like an expansion of older welfare-style provision, which raises questions about the exceptional nature of the military in (neo)liberal states. The chapter concludes with a brief look at the most recent framework for organizing military work and welfare arrangements. ‘WorkLife Balance’ incorporates aspects of both a work-centred and social reproduction-centred approach to recruitment and retention problems.
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As in its civilian incarnation, military Work-Life Balance is centrally concerned with supporting personnel by mediating conflicts between work and ‘life.’ Central to the agenda has been a focus on work-time flexibility, and experimentation with welfare policy to support productivity. Here again, the military faces particular and ironic challenges that offer crucial insights on contemporary debates. Warrior Welfare: The ‘Quality’ of Work and Life In the 1970s employers across Canada and internationally were developing strategies to make work relations feel more cooperative, less hierarchical, and less formal, and to give individual employees a greater sense of autonomy and responsibility. Quality of Working Life (QWL) became a popular movement with professional and academic proponents working in both public and private organizations. As Rose explains, ‘The movement – for it saw itself as that ... saw the task of “humanizing work” as a “priority goal” of the 1970s’ (1999:105). QWL ideas were first conceived by the Tavistock Institute3 in London in the years after the Second World War but were further developed through collaborations with Scandinavian research institutes during the 1960s (Rose 1999:106). This partnership yielded a model of worker identity and work relations that aimed ‘to take shape around a new psychological picture of the employee as a self-actualizing ego whose personal strivings could be articulated into the organization of the enterprise’ (Rose 1999:104). The movement promoted a new image of the worker; the ‘old language of human relations was inflected, even radicalized.’ Most prominent was ‘an explicit concern with the deleterious social and political consequences of alienation at work brought about this culture by the dehumanizing industrial culture, and anxiety about this culture spreading further to the personal services and even the professions’ (Rose 1999:105). In the minds of its proponents, Quality of Working Life initiatives offered organizations a way of responding to the powerful forces that were reshaping the aspirations of workers. QWL would be the framework for reforming work relations and practices in the ‘post-industrial’ economy that was emerging in large swaths of the advanced capitalist economic geography, and in academic discourse.4 QWL was presented as a solution to the problems of employee dissatisfaction, management failure, and productivity decline in a post-industrializing and globalizing economy. The Canadian government rationalized its policies and
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investment in this area using precisely these arguments. In a 1981 speech on workplace reform that appears in the military’s QWL files, the Minister of Labour, Gerald A. Regan, claimed that ‘few areas offer as much hope for economic and social improvement in the future as the area of work restructuring.’ He outlined how ‘the painful restructuring of the world economy; changes in expectations and worker values; apprehensions about the effects of large scale and modern technology; and the world-wide revolt against dependency status – all these are among the web of factors that have stimulated intense scrutiny of the work environment and the quality of work experience.’5 It was as early as the mid-1970s that the Canadian government began to take serious interest in the possibilities of QWL reforms. It credited itself with being original in this regard – one of the very few governments that had implemented QWL initiatives. In 1975 an advisory committee of deputy ministers, impressed with the potential of QWL, recommended implementation of a pilot project in the federal Public Service. The Public Service Alliance of Canada outlined how ‘the literature is full of examples (mostly successful) of QWL applications in the private sector. Government applications are harder to find – especially in the western world. Application in a government setting where there are 84 negotiated agreements in force, as a result of collective bargaining, is probably unique. Canada has it.’6 The Canadian government invested fairly modest amounts in QWL programs, leaving the majority of the efforts to private sector think-tanks and policy institutes. Nevertheless, the government made some significant efforts to foster QWL. In his speech in Chicoutimi, the Minister of Labour outlined how the program would receive renewed attention and funding, and ‘the hefty growth in federal QWL expenditures’ was ‘strong proof of our solid commitment to the concept and the ideals it represents’ given the fiscal pressures on government at the time, and considering that labour was primarily a provincial responsibility. At the same meeting, the minister committed to providing direct financial assistance to organizations interested in implementing QWL projects and research in this area. Noting that the efforts to transform work ‘transcend national boundaries,’ the minister described how QWL ‘is rooted firmly in the conception of the person as essentially an exerter and developer of his or her capacities – not a commodity, not an adjunct of a machine, and not a factor of production.’7 Transforming workplace relations wasn’t simply a matter of smoothing the rough edges of personnel and management
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relations; rather, it would usher in a new vision of the role of work to the worker’s sense of self, and even enable new forms of subjectivity. The minister continued, ‘When work is seen as a central human activity – requiring challenge, variety and involvement – rather than simply as a means of livelihood, the social, psychological and economic benefits become very evident.’8 In his speech the minister contrasted this vision of work as akin to a spiritual endeavour, to the important but supposedly limited benefits that could be secured through collective bargaining. Where once collective bargaining made critical contributions to the betterment of the lives of workers, the minister claimed that these material benefits were no longer enough. ‘Unquestioningly,’ he said, ‘our collective bargaining system has contributed greatly to improvements in the work environment. But today a better educated and more creative work force calls for reforms that require mechanisms beyond periodic bargaining for renewal of a collective agreement with its preoccupation with monetary matters.’9 However, this view of the benefits of QWL to workers was certainly not shared by organized labour, or at least not unanimously. While Rose claims the International Labour Organization was a supporter of these initiatives (1999:106), and indeed it still is today (ILO 2003), many local and national unions charged QWL with usurping their power in the workplace (Wells 1987). Union resistance to QWL initiatives was particularly powerful in Canada, where the British Columbia Federation of Labour issued a proclamation against QWL in 1983 and instructed affiliates not to participate in Quality of Working Life programs. The ban on participation included a wide range of practices that fell under the QWL umbrella, including ‘work improvement programs,’ ‘quality circles,’ ‘team work,’ ‘semi-autonomous work groups,’ ‘employee core groups,’ and employee involvement in job progression or other titles formulated by consultants. B.C. unions saw QWL as ‘primarily an initiative of management and its consultants, along with academics and government bureaucrats.’10 While proponents emphasized the life-enriching and ‘humanizing’ potential of workplace transformation, Canadian unions argued that the individual focus would instead jeopardize the very basis of workers’ strength – collective bargaining. QWL would curtail workers’ ability to influence management and the production process and, in fact, threatened the very rights of workers. The B.C. Federation of Labour (1983) explained: Operating on a collective level, workers strive for solidarity and trade union action. Workers have organized into unions so that rules, regulations,
The Military after Discipline 203 conditions and wages would apply to all members equally. Under a collective agreement, management is unable to apply different standards of pay to various workers. Exerting whatever power they have, unions struggle for higher wages, equal wages, safer working conditions, etc., and in the long run strive for achievement of economic democracy and social justice. Quality of Working Life initiatives aim at the individual level, where the possibility to influence one’s own work situation is created by management relating directly to the individual worker or small group of workers.
Rose (1999:108–9) acknowledges that there ‘is more than a germ of truth’ to criticisms of the potentially marginalizing effects of QWL programs on the role and strength of unions in workplace change, but he also argues forcefully that these initiatives have crucial implications for work and workers beyond the extension of control of labour by capital. ‘The significance of the notion of Quality of Working Life was not merely its capacity to disarm, disguise, and legitimate,’ he argues, but in fact ‘lay, on the one hand, in the new image and meaning of work it articulated for workers, unions, managers, bosses, and politicians trying to programme a reorganization of work to cope with the “turbulent environment” brought about by technological change, international competition, and the new aspirations of citizens.’ On the other hand, its significance lay in the ‘capacity to translate socio-economic and psychological concerns into practicable programmes for the reform of the technical, financial, and political microstructure of work.’ Perhaps most important, Rose posits the emergence of QWL as a fundamental shift in citizenship, where ‘work was becoming aligned with a new image of the citizen, and a new mode of government of economic life was being formulated.’ The Post-Disciplinary Military? While the vast majority of sizeable employers were thinking and working on similar issues at the time, the military’s challenges in this realm were unique. It was the very qualities that made the military distinct among employers, including its reliance on hierarchy, uniforms, rank, and a regimented, rule-bound lifestyle, that were identified as the core problems with work relations by the QWL movement. The military is not any ordinary employer. Its mandate of waging war and the corresponding reliance on exceptional forms of workplace discipline
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and hierarchy make it distinct among public sector employers. It is not like a private sector firm in that it is not ‘productive,’ at least in the usual sense of the term, and it does not ‘compete’ with other companies. Competition is central to the battlefield proper, but with a monopoly on national defence the national military does not compete with other core service providers. Furthermore, the military’s context and economy is first and foremost nationalist. It operates according to a rationality that is geopolitical first, frequently at the expense of economy. Military expenditure is considered a form of necessary wasting, of creative destruction, within a capitalist political economy. Following from this, the military remains a large, public, and heavily bureaucratic institution even in neoliberal times, when privatizing and streamlining services is the order of the day. ‘I cannot get the amount of national defense I want and you, a different amount,’ Milton Friedman proclaimed (2002:23; see also Cowen 2006). This in itself creates a range of differences in terms of organizational structure and the possibilities for workplace change. Certainly we have seen a significant privatization of support services to the military, including housing, base maintenance, and food services, for example. However, the limits to neoliberal labour force strategies in the military emerge very clearly in the context of the soldier citizen. As I will argue below, the soldier becomes more intensely ‘socialized’ in this context. This exceptional status is largely a feature of the nature of military work. The ‘theatre of war’ is governed as an exceptional space, even as it helps to define normal space and time. It has radically changed along with the technologies and geographies of conflict. The theatre of war has become hard to contain in a site or geographical area. Since the Second World War, it has become more technical and ‘longer range’ – even remote controlled. It requires more and more support staff and hightech workers, and if we include the university research labs, or private munitions companies that develop new military technologies, we further blur its spatial and social boundaries. More recently, with the ‘war on terror,’ the theatre of war has literally been globalized and unfolds in the ports of nations near and far, airports around the world, urban spaces on every continent, and increasingly in and through outer space. The extremes of the theatre of war as workplace must be held in check against the fact that most military work happens far from the battlefield, and is devoted to training and bureaucracy, civil aid, and peacekeeping, for example. In fact, a number of scholars have described the ‘civilianization’ of the military since the Second World War in connection with these shifts in military work (Janowitz 1974).
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Today there are also increasing continuities between soldiering and some forms of domestic security and policing work, where the levels of violence, styles of interrogation and incarceration, and even equipment and weaponry are common across military/police lines.11 This point is far more relevant in the U.S. context than the Canadian one, although this leads to another key point about the specificity of Canadian military work; its practice is heavily influenced by decisions made south of the border. Canada adopts decisions regarding weapons technologies, communications systems, even aspects of organizational structure, and increasingly border and port security policy, made in the United States. Surely the military is a place of work. People are employed and get paid. They are hired and sometimes fired; they take holidays and go on leave, and so on. The military as a place of work is unique in that it is characterized by a tension specific to voluntary national armed forces. The military faces the challenge of operating as both an institution ‘of exception’ in the ‘theatre of war,’ whose practices are shaped by geopolitical relations, global technological advance, and bilateral and multilateral defence agreements, and simultaneously an employer that operates in a domestic economy, polity, and labour market. In the context of the discussion about QWL, this combination of forces shaping its practice means that the military desperately needed to implement workplace reform in order to meet the challenges of human resources at home, but absolutely could not do so without undermining the strict forms of hierarchy and discipline that allow a military to wage war. The CFPARU noted this paradox, describing how ‘the Forces fall shorter in offering “ideal employment” than does civilian industry’ and thus was a far less desirable career option ‘for those young workers who have been influenced by social factors and employment trends found in an urban-industrial setting’ (CFPARU 1975a:53). This led researchers to recommend a concerted research and policy effort for the Forces: This finding points up the need to examine personnel policies in light of trends in industrial society: in particular, changing relationships between employers and employees. For example, in contrast with the Forces, civilian industry’s demands on the younger worker are skill and job specific; formal standards of dress or conduct are de-emphasized, and skill and educational levels are rapidly becoming the only means of status differentiation. It is an open question as to how far the Forces can diverge from current occupational trends and still attract and retain qualified manpower, but it is a question that needs to be seriously addressed.
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The military not only faced particularly severe challenges in its efforts to modernize the workplace, but was also the historical progenitor of the very kinds of workplace dynamics that were causing contemporary problems. In his speech cited earlier, the Minister of Labour described ‘the “command” relationship’ as a ‘bad habit inherited from the army and the church.’12 This ‘command relationship’ that defined work practices for so long was in his view ‘under assault’ and would ‘eventually give way to a greater degree of worker autonomy and self-direction.’13 The Canadian Minister of Labour wasn’t the only one to have made connections between the military and the modern forms of discipline and hierarchy of the workplace. In one of his better-known studies, ‘Discipline and Punish,’ Foucault unearthed the development of modern disciplinary power in the classical-age militaries of Europe. The emergence of modern forms of discipline allowed leaders to train individual soldiers to work together in a singular formation as a kind of ‘machine’ in order to maximize efficiency and impact, making fighting more forceful, orderly, and predictable. As its core achievement, discipline enabled the assemblage of a social machine that mobilized more power and operated more efficiently than the sum of its parts. Foucault cites Marx’s writings on the analogies between emerging techniques in the division of labour and those of military tactics. Marx writes, ‘Just as the offensive power of the squadron of a cavalry, or the defensive power of a regiment of infantry, is essentially different from the sum of the offensive or defensive powers of the individual cavalry or infantry soldiers taken separately, so the sum total of the mechanical forces exerted by isolated workmen differs from the social force that is developed, when many hands take part simultaneously in one and the same divided operation.’14 In his own words, Foucault (1979:164) explains that this form of discipline that emerged in the early eighteenth century was no longer an art of ‘distributing bodies, of extracting time from them and accumulating it, but of composing forces in order to obtain an efficient machine.’ Techniques of modern discipline were subsequently dispersed out from the military through factories, schools, and prisons, while discipline itself was eventually generalized across the social sphere. In addition to work on the classical origins of discipline, Foucault also commented on the eclipse of disciplinary power in more recent times. This eclipse coalesces with the emergence of QWL practices, and of neoliberal governmentalities more broadly. In an interview in 1978
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published under the title ‘The Crisis of Disciplinary Society,’ Foucault asserted, ‘We have to say goodbye to the disciplinary society such as it exists today.’15 Deleuze makes similar claims in his ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’ (1992a). Here Deleuze locates the rise of disciplinary society in the transitions associated with Napoleon’s rule and so in modern politico-military formation. He further argues that since the Second World War disciplinary society has been fading, with massive implications for politics, space, subjects, and institutions.16 Indeed, QWL was rooted in an individuated model of the self and society that dovetailed with the broader shifts towards individualism and individual rights described in the preceding chapters. This individualism was most often expressed in the language of progressive humanism, as compared to the instrumental conception of the worker in industrial production models. In a passage worth quoting at some length, the Canadian Minister of Labour explains: As a philosophy, QWL is rooted in strong humanistic values; as a change process it adheres to the democratic principles and procedures of Western Society; as a set of outcomes it focuses on pragmatic results that lead to improved organizational effectiveness and increased job satisfaction. It served to produce a ‘we-we’ atmosphere and a ‘win-win’ orientation between employer and employee and between management and union. In many organizations, the employee is perceived simply as an economic entity whose role is to function as a highly specialized element or cog in some complex production or service apparatus ... QWL treats people as the critical constituent of organizations, and change as inherent characteristics of organizational life. It is primarily concerned with the changing nature, structure and functioning of modern work organizations and the role of individuals and groups in relation to one another and to the objectives of the organization ... QWL does not deny economic imperatives nor does it suggest that employees be molly-coddled and made ‘happy.’ Rather, QWL shifts the emphasis away from short-term efficiency and hierarchical accountability to one of long-term growth and widespread individual responsibility.17
Indeed, an emphasis on the humanism of QWL appears repeatedly in the writing of proponents and in analyses of scholars. Rose (1999:105) insists that ‘profoundly humanistic aspirations’ underpin QWL that propose a ‘new image of the employee as a unique individual seeking a personal meaning and purpose in the activity of labour.’ Of
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course, QWL was not the only emergent form of individualism in the 1960s and 1970s. Rather, it was part of a broader cultural shift towards a pervasive humanism wherein the self-realized individual could deepen his or her identity. This deepening would take place largely through the expression of creativity and individuality at work. This emphasis on individual autonomy and responsibility in economic life was becoming increasingly important across the social and political spheres as well. Lemke (2001:201) writes: The strategy of rendering individual subjects ‘responsible’ (and also collectives, such as families, associations, etc.) entails shifting the responsibility for social risks such as illness, unemployment, poverty, etc. and for life in society into the domain for which the individual is responsible and transforming it into a problem of ‘self-care.’ The key feature of the neo-liberal rationality is the congruence it endeavors to achieve between a responsible and moral individual and an economic-rational individual.
Despite the fact that the military was a historical source of disciplinary power and necessary for basic operational effectiveness, it still took an interest in the potential of QWL reforms. In response to its largescale personnel problems, and in the hopes that workplace reform could help, the CF initiated QWL programs and research initiatives. In their 1977 preliminary investigation of the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment, CFPARU researchers argued that ‘substantial attention must be directed towards improving the intrinsic appeals of initial post-training employment in order to capitalize on the development of positive Organizational Commitment’ given that ‘the availability of a reliable human resource pool ... is especially important in a military organization.’18 Further support for work restructuring in the military came from a 1978 report issued by a military doctor, which outlined problems of stress-related illness among personnel. Emphasizing the importance of job satisfaction and organizational commitment to employee health, the doctor, Lt-Commander Z.D. Belak, reported that 60 per cent of patients ‘suffer from stress illness: tension headaches, ulcers, insomnia, drug and alcohol problems.’ Most important, Belak noted that the kind of stress that was the biggest problem for his patients was not one of overwork, but rather, a lack of ‘positive stress.’ ‘Too many in the forces have roles which ... lack relevance, social
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acceptance and challenge,’ Belak argued, before outlining preventative measures that were becoming popular in the private sector. These included providing ‘gymnasia adjacent to work facilities, stress reduction measures for employees in assembly lines,’ and ‘meditation rooms for executives.’19 The doctor stressed that these measures were associated with increased productivity, and he ‘wondered if these concepts would be applied in a military setting.’ He reiterated the urgency of these initiatives when he asked, ‘Why the concern about stress in the armed forces? Because, ladies and gentlemen, we seem to be in trouble! Recruiting is down, resignations are up. Turn-over of staff is rapid, the regular armed forces are understaffed and overworked, and morale is poor. Alcoholism and divorce are growing problems.’20 In May 1979 the CF enlisted the help of the Center for Quality of Working Life at the Institute for Industrial Relations, University of California, Los Angeles. CFPARU researchers travelled to Los Angeles to meet with the centre’s director. At the meeting, military researchers learned the theory and contours of the QWL movement, and their memos describe how well these matched the CFPARU analysis of personnel problems. Like the CFPARU, QWL aficionados attributed responsibility for changing work expectations to rising levels of education and standards of living. In his report to National Defence Headquarters, the Commanding Officer of CFPARU, Lt-Colonel Rampton, reported: It was generally accepted that QWL is an umbrella term that emphasizes collaborative and participative approaches in dealing with social unrest and employee turbulence ... A noted social analyst explains that because of good energy resources and scientific levels of management (production oriented) we have enjoyed a relatively high standard of living that has precipitated a ‘revolution of rising expectations.’ An additional cause of the rising expectations and dissatisfaction with the ‘status quo’ is the educational system. More people are better educated, better informed and have been exposed to rising levels of income and security that have led to a decreased emphasis on obedience and authority. Consequently – younger people in the labour force especially – have changed from a group with low personal expectations and acceptance of an authoritarian structure, to a work force that expects more with less autocratic direction. They expect to be asked for an opinion and to have the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to the problem solving and decision making processes in the work environment.21
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While the CFPARU had documented the emergence of these very trends, it had also initially expressed a great deal of scepticism about the possibility of moving the military towards these new work cultures. A combination of desperation and optimism pushed the CFPARU to rethink restructuring. By 1980, in a letter to National Defence Headquarters, the CFPARU wrote, ‘On the surface, the lay observer might well think that the fundamental values and philosophy of a military force are so divergent from those of QWL as to preclude ever coming together. However, examination of the central notions of the basic sorts of human relationships that “ought” to occur in a military organization, reveals a far more congruent posture than one would expect.’22 The CFPARU struggled to make sense of these challenges, and to find some possible avenue for positive intervention. Its deliberations were dead serious: ‘Although we cannot conduct military occupations by a method of negotiated consensus, to not keep in step with the developing trends of social change would be to condemn ourselves to irrelevancy.’ The CFPARU asserted, ‘We recruit the product of changing society’ and ‘young service members are exposed to its teachings. The military is a microcosm of society and, as an organization within the larger society, must adjust to it ... to depend upon external factors such as a poor economic and unemployment climate to temper the work frustrations of working people would be short-sighted.’ The CFPARU saw QWL as a safeguard against a competitive world that could make employees more loyal and content. ‘In the very demanding world in which Canadians, both civilian and military, must compete, the difference between success and failure may well be measured in the degree of commitment that employees bring to their jobs in the morning and the degree of satisfaction they take home with them at night.’23 But for all the talk about realizing employee potential and fostering a ‘win-win’ work environment, the military motives for implementing QWL practices were as instrumental as personnel policies had ever been, centred on the interests of the state. Staff memos and letters to National Defence Headquarters in the military’s QWL files suggest little concern for soldiers’ well-being, and every concern for the military manpower situation. One memo from Lt-General J.J. Paradis, Commander of the Mobile Command, outlined the situation: For some time now we have been experiencing difficulties in retaining our young soldiers, particularly in the combat arms. The outlook for the near future seems to be just as bleak as the recent past. There are numerous factors contributing to this serious high rate of attrition, and they can
The Military after Discipline 211 be summarized in one statement – ‘The inability of the Army to fulfill the expectations and aspirations of the young soldier of today’ ... it seems that the principal reason for the early departure of 24% of our highly motivated troops is the lack of opportunity to use the skills that they have learned in basic training ... the first three or four months in the unit are particularly crucial to a young person’s continued commitment to serve. I would like you to make your subordinate leaders aware of the importance of this period, to be sensitive to the need to provide the freshlytrained recruit with situations which help him to develop technically, and to be aware of his need for a sense of personal competence and accomplishment. This will require the officer and NCO to know each young soldier, his progression, and his whereabouts at any given time, even more intimately than previously thought necessary. It is the responsibility of all leaders to develop in their troops the good morale and esprit de corps which contribute to the cohesiveness and efficiency of a group. In this way the aspirations and expectations of the individual often become those of the group. The young soldier of today has more potential than any in our history. We owe it to ourselves, and to the Army, to develop this potential and use it wisely. We cannot afford to waste it.24
However, it was not simply the military’s highly instrumental human resource agenda but also the specificities of the military institution that made QWL a challenging project. Lt-Colonel Rampton explains that ‘while the Ford and other civilian programmes have good reason to treat local top management and local union representatives as being entirely equal partners in QWL programmes, civilian companies have no true counterpart for positions holding military command responsibility and authority.’25 Indeed, the CF slogan ‘No life like it’ is apt. As Morton (2003:122) explains, being a member of the Canadian Forces ‘is different from civilian life. Members belong to a strict hierarchy, their place visible in a glance at their uniforms. Distinctions between officers and non-commissioned members (NCMs) have feudal roots, and some of the differences reflect a class system few Canadians still accept.’ Drawing on the work with the UCLA group, the CF outlined a fairly standard definition of QWL as ‘a collaborative and participative approach to management that enhances work, the worker, and the work place.’26 And yet, it quickly became clear that this would not be an ordinary experiment in workplace reform. For instance, strict hierarchy and vertical power relations would be sustained in the CF, contradicting one of the fundamental principles of the movement. A
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discussion paper on QWL in the CF outlines the range of ways in which workplace reform can proceed in different contexts: ‘QWL activity varies according to national and cultural differences, the local environment, the form and degree of understanding reached between unions and management, the extent of employee/management cooperation in the work site, and many other undefinable circumstances.’27 However, a list of principles that define QWL practices follows this statement, and the very first and most important principle is heavily crossed out with a note in the margin that reads, ‘Not in military.’ The text that was given this treatment reads, ‘Traditional organizational structures, lines of authority and reporting relationships are set aside in the interests of reducing constraints to individual or work group performance.’28 What could it mean to reform work if the hierarchical ordering of workplace authority is left intact? The military’s own report asserts that ‘the success of QWL is guaranteed only by the quality of the process and the full commitment of participants.’ The consequences of anything less could include ‘inadequate commitment by participants; superficial planning or planning unrelated to the idiosyncrasies of the work place; suspicion, envy, fear of innovation and possible job loss.’ It also considers implications of a poor implementation process; for example, ‘the best intentions will fail if the employees have the impression that change is being forced upon them’ and if ‘employees are not allowed to participate fully in the change process.’ Perhaps not surprisingly, the CF did not reap tangible rewards from the QWL initiatives. It did, however, find some relief from recruiting and retention problems as a result of the economic recession, followed by the downsizing of the Canadian military in the 1980s and 1990s. The combination of increased ‘slack’ in the labour market and reduced pressure to enlist recruits temporarily mediated the perpetual recruiting crisis. QWL initiatives did not disappear entirely in this context but faded into the background of personnel policy and management. This fading was significant enough that in the late 1990s, when recruiting and retention again became an acute problem and the CF renewed its interest in these initiatives, there was little institutional memory or record of the details of earlier initiatives. Staff working on these issues in the late 1990s and into the early years of the twenty-first century developed new program ideas and rationales and did not delve into the CF’s own recent program history (Morrow 2004). This new response was identified by a similar but distinct umbrella concept, ‘Quality of Life.’
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Plate 6.1 ‘Not in Military’ Source: Canadian Forces Personnel Applied Research Unit 1980, RG24, box 6, file 5762-3-4.
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Social Citizenship and the ‘Quality of Life’ A discourse of ‘Quality of Life’ emerged in the early 1980s as a new means of organizing and evaluating governmental practices at a variety of spatial scales. In Canada and internationally, Quality of Life (QoL) initiatives have been extraordinarily diverse in terms of the ways they conceptualize collective social life, the scale of ‘community’ they invoke, the actors implicated and authorized, and the ways in which they define priorities and evaluate outcomes. Today the concept of ‘QoL’ appears in a wide range of discourse and practice. It can be found at the core of initiatives in health promotion, workplace management, and urban policing, and is used to rationalize diverse forms of intervention and government, from the punitive to the rehabilitative. A consideration of its various meanings suggests that QoL can signify so many different things that it hardly signifies anything specific at all. The current definition of QoL offered by the City of Toronto provides a perfect example of the expansive meaning of the term; its definition actually refuses to define the concept. Instead, it is explicitly open-ended: Quality of Life is often defined by one particular thing – low crime, availability of arts, entertainment and leisure activity, access to out-of-doors recreational and wilderness areas, an excellent infrastructure or a great university. A definition containing just one attribute would be far too limiting for a city like Toronto, however. Toronto is not just admired for its health-care and education systems or its rich cultural mosaic. Quality of Life in Toronto is not just about its calibre of major league sports, entertainment or cultural offerings. In Toronto, quality of life is about all of these things and more.29
QoL has become so diffuse and omnipresent that we can easily forget that it indeed emerged and is not a transparent or natural signifier with stable meaning. This flexibility of use and users is compounded by the fact that ‘QoL’ discourses have asserted themselves at every possible scale of political intervention and around the world, in literally thousands of cities, countless nations, supranational bodies such as the European Union, and ‘global’ governing bodies such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization. QoL also emerged at the same time as the ideals of the post-war social welfare state were being dissolved and its infrastructure and policies in the process of being dismantled. The flexibility of QoL rationales and applications,
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and its apparent transparence, certainly does not mean that ‘QoL’ is actually obvious in its meaning or value-free. The vague ‘common sense’ of QoL – that we all want more of it – is part of what makes it so intriguing. This lack of specificity becomes exceedingly clear if we consider some of its most notorious uses. Perhaps the best-known state-sponsored program to invoke QoL discourse, and likely the most punitive, was Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s highly contested ‘Zero Tolerance’ law and order campaign of the early 1990s in New York City. Giuliani’s electoral campaign centred around ‘reclaiming the streets’ of New York and was implemented after his election in 1993. This campaign asserted that petty crime and the unsightliness of graffiti, homelessness, and dirty streets were an assault on the ‘quality of life’ of the citizens of New York. The campaign sanctioned targeted, racialized, and often violent, policing styles in an effort to ‘take back’ the streets for white, middle-class uses and users. The fifty-page document, ‘Police Strategy No. 5,’ better known as ‘Reclaiming the Public Spaces of New York,’ asserts that ‘New Yorkers have for years felt that the quality of life in their city is moving away from, rather than toward, the reality of a decent society’ (New York 1994:5). The document proceeds to outline how residents are fleeing the city in order to improve their quality of life, and that many would have remained in New York if the police had acted to enhance the quality of life of themselves and their families (New York 1994:6–7). ‘Quality of Life’ is invoked throughout the document as a self-evident good, despite the fact that it is clearly the QoL of some and not others in question. As one recent report has explained: Reclaiming the streets through a focus on ‘quality of life’ offences became the hallmark of how zero tolerance policing was understood in New York ... The NYPD emphasized more minor ‘quality of life’ crimes, such as graffiti, vagrancy, begging, ‘squeegee’ windshield washing, subway turnstile-jumping, illegal vending, street-level drug dealing and street prostitution. These offences were pursued to demonstrate ‘control’ of the streets. Bratton had previously been Chief of the New York Transit Police and embarked on a ‘quality of life’ policing program which had seen large scale arrests of people for fare evasion.30
These policies heavily circumscribed the rights and freedoms of the homeless, people of colour, poor and low-income people, and gays, lesbians, transgendered people, and other sexual minorities (Berlant and Warner
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2000; Smith 1996) and have since been exported in whole or part to other cities in other nations, most notably Mexico City in 2002 (Friedsky 2003). Another, very different example of an urban QoL initiative that illustrates the range of political projects attached through this discourse is the ‘Healthy Cities Movement.’ This movement, initiated in Toronto in 1985, is anchored by a concern ‘with health and quality of life issues’ in ‘communities.’31 According to an international organization of Healthy City initiatives, the appeal of the perspective is its consideration of ‘the influence of the context – the place, surroundings, relationships and opportunities on the individual.’32 Following an international meeting in Toronto in 1985, where more than a thousand progressive professionals from fields such as health promotion, community planning, and environmental management gathered to outline the movement’s principles, the World Health Organization opened a Healthy Cities Project office in Europe. This office encourages cities ‘to target and solve local problems and get people from many parts of the community involved in the Healthy Cities process.’ The organization outlines a range of relevant issues, including environmental health, education, safety, and homelessness, and stakeholders, including citizens, government, business, and non-profits. The Healthy Cities movement now includes projects in more than one thousand cities, with an ethos and effects that are clearly quite different from Giuliani’s revanchist campaigns (cf. Smith 1996). The transnational migration of QoL discourse has also occurred through United Nations’ operations. The UN Population Program’s statement by the Independent Commission for Population and Quality of Life explains, ‘The ultimate goal of Population and Development is to accord an improved quality of life to the people of the world.’33 However, while the emergence of QoL signifies the end of an era where issues of social policy were considered first and foremost by states at the national scale, QoL initiatives have indeed been implemented nationally as well. Japan, for example, maintains a cabinet office devoted entirely to ‘Quality of Life Policy.’ Another national body, the Australian Centre for Quality of Life, explains that the concept is ‘emerging as a central construct within many disciplines, such as those comprising the social sciences, economics, and medicine. Its attraction, in part, is that it offers an alternative to some traditional disciplinary views about how to measure success ... it extends the traditional objective measures of health, wealth, and social functioning to include subjective perceptions of well-being’ (ACQL 2004).
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In its emphasis on qualitative measures and through its valorization of the role of third sector and private sector contributions to governing social life, QoL has had the effect of rationalizing state retrenchment from social welfare and displacing questions of material distribution from social politics. As it does this, it furthermore helps to produce the social polarization that is increasingly defining our present. And yet, while QoL most certainly has these effects, there is also a range of other implications of this discourse that demand closer scrutiny. As with the Quality of Working Life movement, QoL is a part of a shift in normative notions of citizenship. QoL discourse contributes to the rise of governmental projects that emphasize activism, entrepreneurialism, and responsibility. As such, QoL emphasizes capacities. The Australian Centre explains that a further value of the QoL framework is that ‘it directs attention onto the positive aspects of people’s lives, thus running counter to the deficit orientation of these disciplines’ (ACQL 2004). The Quality of Life Research Center at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management defines itself as an institute that ‘studies “positive psychology”; that is, human strengths such as optimism, creativity, intrinsic motivation, and responsibility’ (QLRC 2003). QoL has been an important part of the reorientation of citizenship in the wake of national welfarism. It sanctions practices in the areas of law and order, environment, health, and social welfare, distinguished not by any central organization or clear common program but primarily by a common critique of dominant conceptions of human well-being that preceded them. While QoL is clearly invoked in disparate styles and scales of governance, for all its lack of specificity it also has some important overarching effect. QoL as a means of diagnosing the social displaces core elements of welfarist citizenship, including the central authority and responsibility of the nation state in governing the social, the emphasis on redistribution and ‘universal’ entitlement, and the use of quantitative measures to assess social life and policy initiatives. Military Quality of Life? Ironically, military Quality of Life, which emerged at the same time as civilian initiatives, looks much more like an expansion of classic social welfare. A pioneer in this area, the U.S. military began investigating the value of QoL for its organization quite early on, in order to better understand its effects on personnel retention in the wake of conscription. The Center for Naval Analyses confirmed in 1981 that ‘military
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services have devoted much attention in recent years to improving quality of military life’ (United States Navy 1981). It defines QoL as a ‘broad term used to describe the non-monetary aspects of military living and working conditions. Housing, recreation, counseling, and medical services are examples of QOL-related programs.’ This emphasis on the qualitative aspects of individual well-being, and the multiple avenues open for intervention, is common with QoL civilian practice, but military QoL is strictly a field of national government. Furthermore, like old models of Keynesian social policy, it operates in direct relation to labour force management. While social welfare was by and large under the authority of states, and Quality of Working Life the domain of both public and private employers, Quality of Life doesn’t explicitly identify actors, or even the scale of ‘community’ whose life quality is in question. The small but significant difference between ‘Quality of Working Life’ and ‘Quality of Life’ signals a shift from work-specific initiatives to those addressing potentially limitless aspects of everyday life and social reproduction. The breadth of areas open to intervention within the context of a QoL discourse is thus far more extensive than those addressed by most employers. It is nevertheless well suited to the military, which is both employer and state simultaneously. Classifications of ‘public’ and ‘private’ life, or ‘production’ and ‘reproduction,’ are utterly inadequate for organizing the interventions of a total institution; when employee social and family life, recreation and leisure, housing quality and tenure are all in the hands of the employer, then ‘private life’ is labour policy. Indeed, recruitment and retention challenges are addressed as much through the interventions in the military family home as in the mess hall and on the battlefield. The Canadian military has long been aware of the value of expanding benefits for personnel management, as I have argued throughout this book. Furthermore, as early as 1975, the CFPARU was again recommending the expansion of service benefits. ‘Some compromise solution, perhaps in the form of additional benefits, must eventually be found if the Forces are to compete with non-military employers,’ it argued. But despite this early awareness, the ability to expand service benefits was dependent on the political will and budget allocations of the federal government, and the military was not its highest priority at the time. Recruitment problems were also mediated by the economic recession of the 1980s, which meant little policy development took place in these areas. Despite this brief reprieve, researchers warned trouble would
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Image Not Available
Plate 6.2 Canadian Forces Families Source: Canadian Forces 2003.
again be on the horizon with economic recovery. However, it wasn’t until the 1990s that the CF would begin to actively work on QoL issues. CF attention to QoL first took shape through investment in military family welfare in the 1990s and mirrored U.S. and U.K. initiatives (Harrison and Laliberté 1994:78–9). The CF initiated a whole new Directorate of Military Family Services (DMFS) and created the Canadian Forces Personnel Service Association.34 The Military Family Support Program was implemented in 1991, in conjunction with the completion of the Military Family Services Plan, and was modelled in part on programs in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. This program aimed to ease the growing burden of military family life, which had become an increasingly important source of personnel problems since the 1970s. Conflicts over military family life were compounded by demographic and cultural change. The number of single parents is lower in the military than in civilian society, and yet the figure had tripled since 1976, reaching 3.6 per cent of personnel by the early 1990s (Code and Cameron 1993; Canada 1998c). This figure is growing and poses acute childcare challenges in a military context. The average age of soldiers’ dependents is also much lower today than it was in 1976 and 1986, which poses additional complications in the area of childcare for deployed parents. The rate of spousal employment has steadily increased in the CF and, at 79 per cent, is now higher than the rate of the Canadian labour force at 66 per cent (Canada 1998c). ‘If the Forces family is happy, the soldier, sailor, airman or woman is happy,’ Commodore Duncan Miller, Director of Operations, Foreign and Defence Policy Secreteriat, Privy Council Office, exclaimed. ‘This not only provides a more caring approach,’ he asserted, ‘but has made us more conscious of what really is a service requirement. Support to
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families enhances operational effectiveness: there is no doubt about it.’ When deployed in the Gulf, ‘knowing that we had good family support allowed us to concentrate on the job at hand ... Back home, our families were even being delivered milk cartons with yellow ribbons around them, to honour our service’ (Code and Cameron 1993:3–4). Indeed, over the course of the 1990s the CF learned the value of taking the military family seriously. Family initiatives were expanded quite dramatically following a report issued by the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs (SCONDVA), the body responsible for the mandate, management, and operation of National Defence. In 1998 SCONDVA unveiled a full-scale plan to improve military QoL. The plan, entitled ‘Moving Forward: A Strategic Plan for Quality of Life Improvements in the Canadian Forces,’ attributes declining recruitment rates to poor military QoL and prioritizes renewed investment in the family life of soldiers. Considered the turning point in Canadian military QoL, it recommends investment of up to $1 billion in military family housing alone (SCONDVA 1998). The report made eighty-nine recommendations in the areas of pay and allowances, the housing portfolio, the injured, retired, and veterans, the military family, and ‘transitions’ – including recognition, work expectations, and conditions of service (Canada 2003c). The SCONDVA report outlined a new approach to soldier QoL that would no longer ‘ruminate in the realm of the abstract.’ Instead, SCONDVA (1998) concluded that ‘our national commitment’ is ‘in essence a moral commitment,’ and it outlined a list of ‘concrete principles’ that would define this commitment: • That the members of the CF are fairly and equitably compensated for the services they perform and the skills they exercise in performance of their many duties. • That all members and their families are provided with ready access to suitable and affordable accommodation. Accommodation provided must conform to modern standards and the reasonable expectations of those living in today’s society. • That military personnel and their families be provided with access to a full and adequate range of support services, offered in both official languages, that will ensure their financial, physical and spiritual well-being. • That suitable recognition, care and compensation be provided to veterans and those injured in the service of Canada. Here, the guiding principle must always be compassion.
The Military after Discipline 221 • That members be assured reasonable career progression and that in their service they be treated with dignity and respect.
The Department of National Defence responded quickly to the SCONDVA report and created the ‘Project Management Office, Quality of Life’ (PMO QOL) (Baldwin 2004). This office coordinated and monitored the implementation of the QoL initiatives before being transformed into a full directorate within the DND – the Directorate Quality of Life (DQOL) – in September 2001. The current definition of QoL in place in the Canadian Forces is conceptualized as follows: ‘Quality of Life in the Canadian Forces is the degree to which the well-being, work environment and living conditions of our people and their families are consistent with evolving standards, while recognizing the unique demands of military service in accomplishing the mission of the CF. Life conditions essential to quality of life include three domains that influence the degree to which a member is likely to rate his or her quality of life as being good.’35 Of the eighty-nine SCONDVA recommendations, fifty-six had already been addressed at the time I conducted interviews for this book, and the target date for complete implementation was April 2005 (Baldwin 2004). Important initiatives at that time included the ‘Definition of the Family’ initiative, which ‘will modernize the CF definition of the family based on changing demographics, to support the application of departmental benefits and programs for CF members and their families’ (Baldwin 2004; Canada 2001f). The ‘Definition of the Family’ initiative, perhaps surprisingly, did not emerge in response to changing regulations around same-sex partnerships but primarily in response to familial norms across different social classes and cultural groups (Baldwin 2004). The primary challenge of family for the CF relates to family size and not the sex of family members. Benefits were extended to same-sex couples in the 1990s, and this move did not require a rethinking of family form. The most pressing matter for the DQOL by 2004 was the question of extended families and alternative notions of ‘dependents’ beyond the nuclear family form. This has become a central concern for the CF as its personnel and its political economic context both are in a state of flux. As the CF attempts to recruit more people from immigrant communities, it has had to consider how to accommodate extended family forms that might include cousins, parents, uncles, and grandparents. The issue of family form is also emerging specifically in relation to recruits from poorer regions of
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Image Not Available Plate 6.3 Canadian Forces Quality of Life Source: Canadian Forces 2004e.
the country, and Newfoundland and Labrador in particular (Baldwin 2004). In regions of high unemployment and in the context of significant cutbacks to the Canadian system of social security, it is increasingly common for parents and other members of the extended family to make claims for dependent benefits (Baldwin 2004). A return to the family economy appears under way for some recruits, and the military is being asked to respond. The Military Family Resource Centres already offer some services to extended military family members, but whether the CF can weigh the high costs of extended family benefits with its need to recruit the very people asking for them is still an open question. Other priority issues for the DQOL include a complete review of the Military Family Services Program; the Personnel Tempo Initiative, which ‘will quantify the effects of the substantial amount of time spent away from home and family by CF members as a result of military duties’ (Canada 2001f); the Family Violence Program; and the development of a ‘Quality-of-Life Index,’ which ‘will be used to better measure and quantify the implementation and tracking of quality-of-life recommendations and activities on an ongoing basis’ (Canada 2001f). The DQOL is also embarking on a large-scale information-sharing initiative with the Australian military, also considered to be a leader in this area (Baldwin 2004). Childcare remains a difficult issue for the CF. While the United States implemented the Military Child Care Act of 1989, the CF is constrained in this regard by federal Treasury Board policy that prohibits the use of federal funds for public daycare (SCONDVA 1998). Nevertheless, childcare continues to be a pressing issue for personnel, and so the DMFS in conjunction with the DQOL is struggling to respond. Following the SCONDVA report, the DND established the Emergency Childcare Service, and initiatives such as Family Care Assistance, Child Care Coordinators, and the Family Care Plan followed (Canada 2003d). The navy has explored ways to incorporate
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Image Not Available
Plate 6.4 Homecoming Family and friends greet the crew of HMCS Iroquois, returning from the Arabian Sea and Operation Apollo, Canada’s contribution to the campaign against terrorism, at Canadian Forces Base Halifax dockyard. Source: National Defence Image Library 2003. Credit: Pte Halina Folfas, Formation Imaging Services, Halifax.
flexibility into military family policies, which have been based ‘on the model of the traditional military family as opposed to the many configurations of families that are becoming increasingly prevalent’ (Canada 1998a, item 61). Recognizing the importance of keeping its family policies in line with the changing life patterns of recruits, and in particular the rising number of women in its ranks, the navy explains that there are women ‘for whom the Navy is a satisfying and worthwhile experience, who choose to leave because of a desire to raise a family.’ It insists that ‘the extent to which the Navy can allow flexibility in careers and benefits needs to be investigated ... issues which should be addressed include childcare requirements and benefits, as well as consideration of flexibility options: e.g. [leave without
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pay] for family reasons (e.g. pre-school children), four-over-five programs (whereby four years salary is paid over five years, the fifth year being a period of absence), and transfer to/from Reserve during child-rearing years’ (Canada 1998a:63–4). This increasing concern for personnel childcare as a result of both changing demographics and recruiting conditions has also generated initiatives for pregnant personnel. Historically, the Canadian Forces dismissed servicewomen who became pregnant, but today it is making efforts to accommodate personnel parenting, and it has even published a guide on healthy living for pregnant personnel (Canada 2003a). All in all, the system of QoL services and support for personnel has become quite extensive. Some of these initiatives are longstanding, and others were initiated after the 1998 report, but they are now drawn together under the QoL concept and directorate. The DQOL website36 lists the following services, programs, and offices available to personnel: WELLBEING
Veteran Affairs Canada (VAC) Public Service Health Care Plan (PSHCP) Canadian Forces Dental Care Plan (CFDCP) CF Health Information Line Understanding and Accessing Your Health Care Benefits Director General Health Services (DGHS) Chaplain General (Chap Gen) Director Casualty Support and Administration (DCSA) Operational Stress Injury Social Support (OSISS) Operational Trauma and Stress Support Centres (OTSSC) Personal Support Program (PSP) Messes National Passenger Service Centre (NPSC) CF National Sports Program Canada Health Act National Clearinghouse on Family Violence (NCFV) Canadian Forces Member Assistance Program (CFMAP) WORK ENVIRONMENT
Canadian Forces Personal Enhancement Programme (PEP) Canadian Defence Academy (CDA) Professional Development Directorate of History and Heritage (DHH)
The Military after Discipline 225 Clothing online Public Service Job Search Tools Second Career Assistance Network (SCAN) Director General Compensation and Benefits (DGCB) LIVING CONDITIONS
CF Families Web Page Military Family National Advisory Board (MFNAB) Director Military Family Services Program (DMFS) Deployment Support Services Military Family Resource Center (C/MFRC) Canadian Forces Housing Agency (CFHA) CANEX Service Income Security Insurance Plan (SISIP) CF Provost Marshall (Military Police – MP) Move of Furniture and Effect-Guidance to Members Canadian Mortgage & Housing Corporation (CMHC) The Canadian Real Estate Association (MLS) CF Integrated Relocation Program Your TOTAL Move Planner
The comprehensive nature of resources available to personnel is remarkable. It spans a range of services beyond the basic material needs of housing and health care, to include mental health services and professional development. On paper, military QoL constitutes a system of support that has never been matched in Canadian civilian society. Military Brats and the ‘Military Socialization Infrastructure’ If the military’s interest in the family life of personnel took shape largely in response to the changing needs of its existing labour force, concern for the military family was also a long-term recruitment strategy. Military recruiters had an eye on the offspring of existing personnel. Expanding family services became a means of encouraging the biological reproduction of the current military labour force, with the hopes that the children of soldiers – military brats – were likely to consider military careers for themselves. This had its source in CFPARU observations from the 1980s. ‘The relationship found to exist between military families and applicants emphasizes the important role played by serving members in generating applicants,’ the CFPARU reported
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(1989:39). Not only did military families literally produce new military personnel, but they also produced people familiar with the exceptional norms of military life. ‘Of added value is the fact that the applicants exposed to military members are more apt to have a cursory understanding of the lifestyle, ethos and general modus operandi of the CF,’ the CFPARU explained, emphasizing how the ‘applicant’s realistic job expectations can only benefit the recruiting system by helping to decrease unscheduled early attrition.’ The CFPARU recommended that the military might exploit this resource and ‘base by encouraging all military members to become active recruiters, and in so doing increasing the number of military family applicants’ (CFPARU 1989:39). When the CF began to investigate women’s recruitment patterns seriously in the 1990s, it again discovered the importance of families and friends in generating new recruits. In 1999 it found that both the first and the most comprehensive source of information about the CF for most recruits was a friend or relative with military experience (Canada 2000:18). An American military sociologist even described the increasing reliance on personal and familial networks for enlistment in that context as the cultivation of a ‘warrior class or caste’ (Moskos 2000). In Canada this knowledge spurred the expansion of programs for youth, designed to do the early work of socializing them for military futures. The expansion of what is termed the ‘military socialization infrastructure’ has taken place primarily through paramilitary and military youth programs, as ‘these type of institutions perform the function of exposing potential applicants to the work and lifestyle of the CF and, in so doing, develops in individuals the desire to apply for CF employment or at least consider the military as a viable career option’ (CFPARU 1985:4–5). The CFPARU recommended expansion of the reserves, Cadets, and other ‘socializing programs’ as it was clear that ‘active recruiting within these institutions may prove to be helpful in producing even greater numbers of applicants from this proven source.’ As part of this effort, the CF has reinvested in both the Cadet and Junior Ranger programs. The Canadian Cadet Program’s official objectives are ‘to develop the attributes of good citizenship and leadership in young men and women, promote their physical fitness and stimulate their interest in the sea, land and air activities of the CF’ (Canada 2004a). The program offers federally sponsored training for youth aged 12 to 18 and counted close to 55,000 participants in 2000/1. The federal government spent $157.2 million on the Cadets in the same year, and a substantial portion of funds came from the Government Youth
The Military after Discipline 227 Table 6.1 National Defence Cadet Expenditures, 1997–2000 Program Expenditures ($000s)
Personnel Operating Subtotal
1997–8 -
1998–9 -
1999–2000
56,987
66,951
80,691
48,351
53,332
66,316
105,338
116,497
147,007
Grants
615
646
615
Capital
858
2,795
11,059
$106,811
$123,724
* $158,681
Total
* Includes $5 million for Operation PARASOL (humanitarian aid for Kosovo refugees), $16.7 million for Youth Initiatives, and $10 million in special ‘in-year’ funding for infrastructure and IT projects. Source: www.dnd.rangers.ca.
Initiatives Program. The expansion of the Cadets budget over the course of only three years is clearly evident in Table 6.1. Expenditure has continued to grow since the turn of the century, with total expenditure reaching $173,391 in the 2004/5 fiscal year. The Junior Ranger Program (JCR) is the youth component of the Canadian Rangers and has the official objective of providing ‘a structured youth program that promotes traditional cultures and lifestyles in remote and isolated communities of Canada’ (Canada 2004b). Under this DND program, participants, leaders, and even some financial and material resources are drawn from the local community while the CF provides financial and administrative support and training. The JCR total budget of $5,070,000 in 2000/1 was supported by a range of government offices, with the core contributors being the DND, Human Resources Development Canada, Youth Initiatives, and CANRAN 2000. In the same year the JCR Program expanded, with the formation of 14 new patrols for a total of 1,800 participants in 72 remote northern communities. The CF initiated planning for 13 additional patrols in this year. The DND emphasizes the benefits of the program for northern communities (rather than for its own labour force) when it suggests that expansion of the program ‘has served to improve the impact of the CF in these remote and isolated regions of Canada and will provide invaluable assistance to the communities in which Rangers and JCRs reside’ (Canada 2004b).
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Flexible Fighters? The CF did not shift entirely from an agenda of workplace reform and Quality of Working Life initiatives to one of personnel welfare and family policy in its emphasis on Quality of Life. Instead, concerns for workplace relations were subsumed under QoL policies and management. These concerns were resuscitated under the banner of ‘Work-Life Balance’ in the early years of the twenty-first century in connection with the expansion of recruiting targets. Workplace reform again became an element of wide-ranging initiatives to improve service life. However, while earlier Quality of Working Life approaches called for flattening hierarchy and reforming related aspects of institutional organization, WorkLife Balance is concerned with flexibility in service tenure and in the organization of work weeks and workdays. This new emphasis was motivated by the changing demographics of military employment, and the CF’s commitment to encourage those changes. Work-Life Balance is geared towards making the everyday work of personnel more suited to the responsibilities of childcare and eldercare. The emphasis on flexibility at work emerged largely in response to the economic conditions and management relations of the recession during the 1980s to 1990s. In their national study of work-life conflict in Canada, consultants to the DND explained that during this recession ‘organizational flexibility was pursued at the expense of employee flexibility’ (Duxbury and Higgins 2002a:6, 2002b). With economic recovery and an increasingly tight labour market, compounded by the shrinking pool of young workers, ‘organizations looking to “become employers of choice”’ began ‘turning to issues of work-life balance in order to improve both recruitment of new employees and retention of existing ones’ (Canada 2004c:7). Indeed, the CF ‘had to increase training and maintenance of competency opportunities, establish varied and more flexible career streams, improve career and deployment planning, and increase involvement in research’ (Canada 2001f). After a brief review of workplace reforms that were under way in the U.S., Spanish, Australian, Belgian, New Zealand, and German militaries, including part-time and flextime programs and various re-entry programs, the CF reiterated the need for programs supporting flexible work arrangements (Canada 2004c:38–44). Benefits were another area where there was a recognized need for more ‘flexible and responsive’ policies. Pension plans have received a particularly serious treatment in their first major overhaul since 1960.
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Using language that is reminiscent of the policy’s last overhaul, the ‘Pension Modernization Plan’ was organized in direct response to recruiting challenges as part of the broader goal of ‘developing more flexible employment arrangements.’ The CF understood ‘a modern and effective pension plan’ to be ‘a key tool in ensuring that the Canadian Forces is an “employer of choice”’ (Canada 2003e). The plan aims to make pensions conducive to a broader range of service patterns while recognizing distinct aspects of military work. Proposed amendments link benefits to years of service, rather than the traditional military arrangement of making pensions contingent on completed terms of service. These amendments would allow for shorter terms of service, intermittent service, and movement between the reserve and regular forces. The minimum number of years of service required in the reformed military pensions remains shorter than their civilian counterparts, in order to recognize the distinct challenges and demands of military service. These initiatives in QoL and Work-Life Balance are central to the Canadian Forces’ human resource and recruiting and retention strategies for the coming decades. With this plan, the CF is optimistic that it will lure talented citizens. If it can offer a range of ‘exciting, challenging and flexible career paths, an improved quality of life and compensation packages that include competitive pensions,’ the Canadian Forces is confident that it will ‘attract the best and brightest’ and improve its status ‘as an employer of choice’ (Canada 2003f).
7 The Soldier and the Rise of Workfare: Generalizing an Exceptional Figure?
The army is the best workfare program ever.1 In the unremitting fight against terror, we are all targets, and, therefore, we must all be soldiers.2
Today, as in earlier moments, military citizenship can only be understood in connection to the broader politics and geographies of war, work, and welfare. When we take all these fields into account, the military’s recent optimism for its own future may not be entirely unreasonable. The expansion of welfare for soldiers shadows more familiar changes to the politics of work and welfare in the civilian world. Here we have seen growing social and spatial polarization, a crisis of the Keynesian welfare state and its ‘universal’ social rights, and an expanding emphasis on obligations over entitlements in citizenship, all of which may complement a future of strong military citizenship. The dismantling of national forms of social and economic security seemingly dovetails with the expansion of military welfare – a potential that becomes more compelling when we consider the question of contemporary war. War is becoming more pervasive as it escapes the categories that once worked to contain it. War is now often waged after official declarations of peace. The war in Iraq is an obvious example; U.S. President George W. Bush declared the end of the war in 2003, and yet several years later armed conflict drags on. The blurring of the categories of war and peace has been under way, however, since the Second World War, as a number of scholars remind us (McNamara 1968; Hobsbawm 2002). McNamara, for example, writing in 1968, states that in the ‘eight years
The Soldier and the Rise of Workfare 231
through late 1966 alone there were no less than 164 internationally significant outbreaks of violence, and not a single one of the 164 conflicts was a formally declared war. Indeed, there has not been a single declaration of war anywhere in the world since World War II’ (1968:62). At the same time, the spatial boundaries of war have become increasingly blurred. The tactics and technologies of warfare are deployed more and more frequently on civilian populations, both through the domestic deployment of military forces and the (para)militarization of policing strategies and weaponry (Kraska 2001; Shapiro and Alker 1996). War is rarely waged between nation states today but rather is increasingly civil in nature. The expansion of international policing, the decline of national imaginaries of friends and enemies, the criminalization of migration, and the extension of border control practices into local jurisdictions and diverse institutions are all symptomatic of this blurring of the national geographies of war (Andreas and Price 2001; Campbell 2005; Hobsbawm 2002). The blurring of the spatial, temporal, and ontological categories that defined modern warfare has definite although certainly complex and contingent implications for military forces. Global expansion of military budgets and personnel strength, though highly contested, nevertheless proceeds apace. This blurring furthermore threatens to destabilize the separation between the norms of citizenship and the exceptional political forms governing soldiers. As many have noted in this era of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the state of exception that once characterized the suspension of law has become increasingly general, perhaps even characteristic of a ‘new normal’ (Didion 2004; Agamben 2005; see also Pratt 2005; Gregory 2004). These transformations combined suggest both a healthy and ongoing demand for troops, coupled with a growing supply of uninsured, underemployed, low-skill workers to fill the ranks. Furthermore, as I will outline shortly, the exceptional forms that govern the soldier outside the rights of citizenship are becoming increasingly common with the eclipse of social rights and the move towards a regime of workfarist citizenship. There is no single normative model of citizenship emerging today as there was in the period during and after the Second World War. Universalism is history and targeting the order of the day (Cowen 2005b; Bhandar 2004). Within today’s more stratified arena of citizenship, the soldier is nevertheless (again) becoming one absolutely central model of work and life. In this chapter I explore the recent intersections between military work and welfare state restructuring through an examination of the
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generalization of ‘workfare.’ I begin with a brief overview of the dismantling of post-war work-welfare arrangements in Canada since the 1980s. This dismantling was organized around the claim that declining worker productivity and welfare dependency were responsible for economic recession. A growing neoliberal consensus asserted that ‘too much security’ was producing national economic inefficiency. I outline how virtuous citizenship became defined as active, independent, entrepreneurial, and economically productive. I then consider how, ironically, by the 1990s a growing defence lobby asserted that there was not enough security in Canada, by which was meant national military security rather than security in its social form. This lobby, bolstered by the end of the Cold War and then the ‘war on terror,’ has managed to put defence at the top of the national agenda. Together, these trajectories are creating conditions of tremendous economic insecurity among citizens along with a growing demand for military personnel (with expanded employment benefits and job security). I suggest that workfare has become central to contemporary strategies for managing the challenges of insecurity in both its social and national forms. Post-Welfarism and the Rise of Workfare in Canada Scholars across disciplines and from various theoretical traditions concur that Keynesian welfare policy has been largely dismantled over the past three decades in Western capitalist nations. The dissolution of post-war forms of social and economic government is characterized in particular by the decline of ‘universal’ welfarism with its commitments to redistribution, social citizenship rights, and full employment. Explanations for this change are wide-ranging, and I’ve touched on some elements already in the preceding sections and chapters. The expanding public presence and purse strings of a class of elites who own more and more of the (inter)national economy is a feature of these shifts in Canada and elsewhere. There are insights to be gained from an analysis, popular among some critical scholars, that ‘neoliberalism’ is akin to a shift to more punitive politics catering to the powerful whims of a rejuvenated ruling class (cf. Harvey 2003). Specifically, the emphases on the historical and geographical dimensions of class struggle and reconfiguration at the centre of this work are helpful. However, the actions and agency of the ruling elite are not necessarily the most interesting or important problem for political analysis. More important for this analysis is the way in which
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neoliberal rationalities and the solutions they propose to contemporary political problems have become common sense to such a large group of citizens; how they help to define their sense of self, their conduct, and the demands they make of others, even for classes of people whose interests wouldn’t ‘objectively’ seem to be met by neoliberal policy. New forms of government have their source in the long-term reshaping of social relations and social struggles. They emerge out of reconfigured norms of conduct and belonging, and the reworking of political subjectivity and rule. New problems of government have emerged as a result of massive shifts in national and international economies, changing norms of work, and reconfigured social relations and expectations. Economic globalization coalesced with the growing domestic demands of groups excluded from normative national citizenship to test the limits of post-war social and economic arrangements. The global economic recession of the 1970s challenged the ability of the national model of economic regulation to maintain its effectiveness in a globalizing world. The fact that it was the national leaders of the nation-state system that constructed the very agreements and institutions that helped undermine the ‘sovereignty’ of nation states may be ironic, but it is also difficult to deny (Sharma 2006:31). These challenges and others increasingly made the post-war notion of national risk sharing seem like an impossible and naive ideal. Groups who were historically excluded politically but exploited economically began making political claims in the 1960s and 1970s. Gradually, the limits of a social and economic system that was essentially not accidentally designed to meet the needs of a highly selective social group became clear. The actual costs of universalizing particular rights were staggering, and the political backlash palpable. The claims of people of colour, the poor, workers, women, Aboriginals, gays and lesbians, and countless issue-based social movements were suddenly ‘too much,’ and liberal tolerance had gone ‘too far.’ These shifts, coupled with declining economic growth and productivity and growing public debt, meant that redistributive programs were increasingly seen as the problem and not the goal. A new brand of politics that has been characterized as ‘authoritarian populism’ in some contexts (Hall 1980) emerged among the middle and skilled working classes. This style of politics increasingly targets two figures: the ‘spoiled welfare cheat’ and the ‘unproductive liberal.’3 Both figures are said to take without giving back, and with a sense of entitlement rooted in hubris rather than human right.
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Throughout the 1980s, across Western capitalist nations, support grew for deep cuts to social programs, for means testing, and for tighter control on access to welfare benefits (Hobsbawm 1994:308; Quaid 2002:31). Habermas largely attributes the eclipse of welfarism to its own effects and contradictions. On the one hand, he sees inherent limitations to a Keynesian system that cannot intervene in economic functioning ‘other than through interventions that conform to the economic system’ (1990:57). He makes the compelling claim that the very success of the welfare state helped generate an eventual demand for its termination. The upwardly mobile middle classes that had directly benefited from education subsidies, family policies, health care, and other policies became its most aggressive adversaries when the economy started to stagnate. ‘In times of crisis,’ Habermas asserts, ‘the upwardly mobile groups of voters who received the greatest direct benefits from the welfare state development can develop a mentality concerned with maintaining their standard of living and may ally themselves with the old middle class, and in general the strata concerned with “productivity,” to form a defensive coalition opposing underprivileged or marginalized groups’ (1990:57). In Canada, a large constituency that extends beyond the confines of the capitalist classes supported massive change to the state and to citizenship. Policy proposals that came from the extreme right wing and that were highly suspect in the 1980s became almost common sense by the late 1990s (Peck 2001). The re-regulation of work and the conditions and rewards of worker-citizenship have been a fundamental part of this transformation. From the mid-1970s, think-tanks and government commissions launched common critiques of Canadian unemployment insurance programs. These critiques surfaced alongside the global economic recession, but their proponents looked elsewhere for explanations. The central target of these critiques was not the failure of national or international regulatory systems per se, or the cyclical and necessarily destructive nature of capitalist ‘creativity’ and accumulation, or even the changing nature and geography of work in Canada and around the world. Rather, the emerging consensus was that a problem lay with workers themselves. According to these analyses, workers had become increasingly unproductive and apathetic, and thus were being outbid by more industrious workers in other, more ‘competitive’ places.4 Unemployment benefits were attributed responsibility for unemployment, charged with inspiring and economizing ‘dependency’ in place of entrepreneurialism (Bédard and Grignon 2000; Guest 1997:261).
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Critics of the welfare state pointed to the gradual but consistent rise in unemployment rates and the growing length of terms of unemployment since the Second World War. From an average rate of 2 per cent during the 1940s, the unemployment rate rose to 4 per cent during the 1950s, 5 per cent in the 1960s, and 6.7 per cent in the 1970s. It continued to rise in conjunction with the recession and reached an average rate of 9.4 per cent during the 1980s (Bédard and Grignon 2000). By 1993 long-term unemployment was at three times its 1976 level (Guest 1997:253). It was also increasingly clear that fewer and fewer of the new jobs being created were stable or full-time. In fact, by 2002, more than 40 per cent of employed women and 30 per cent of employed men were in ‘non-standard’ jobs (Vosko, Zukewich, and Cranford 2003:18). As this suggests, eroding conditions of employment were experienced unevenly. Women and workers over 45 years of age were hit particularly hard. The percentage of people from these groups who were long-term unemployed grew substantially, while the average period of unemployment reached a peak of twenty-nine weeks between 1984 and 1988 (Bédard and Grignon 2000). Keynesian policy was no longer demonstrating much finesse in managing national economic fluctuations. But rather than look to the systemic problems with this form of social and economic regulation, which Habermas identified above, right-wing critics focused primarily on the need to remake government in such a way that it would foster an entrepreneurial spirit in the individual. Post-Keynesian theories that were in their infancy in the 1960s were increasingly becoming the popular explanation for contemporary crises in the 1980s. These theories were assembled and refined most powerfully in the work of the ‘Chicago School’ economists, who radically reconfigured notions of the individual, freedom, and government, the latter in both its broadest and narrow meanings. Lemke (2001) outlines how the emerging political rationality of the Chicago School, the distinctly American school of neoliberalism, centred on ‘encoding the social domain as a form of the economic domain’ so that ‘cost-benefit calculations and market criteria can be applied to decision-making processes within the family, married life, professional life, etc.’ Indeed, cost-benefit analysis became the fundamental logic of this economic ‘science,’ and political problems were subordinated to its calculations. For the major proponents of these theories, freedom and free markets were interchangeable. State intervention was conceptualized as the problem, not the solution. Milton Friedman, author of the influential 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, member and past president of the
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Mont Pelerin Society, leading consultant on economic reform in Chile under Pinochet, and the most prolific of the Chicago School theorists, is renowned for having made such statements as, ‘underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself,’ and ‘the government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.’ Indeed, the restructuring of the relationship between state and market is widely understood to be at the centre of neoliberal reform. In their quest to liberate citizens from big costs and big government, early practitioners of neoliberal techniques turned their attention to a range of state practices, including U.S. military conscription (Cowen 2006). Welfarism came under particular attack as a cornerstone of Keynesian logics of economic government, charged with creating cultures of economic dependency, interfering with ‘natural’ economic equilibrium, and infringing on the ‘freedom’ of individuals. These ideas began to guide practice in the United States quite early, where they were exported from the Department of Defense and implemented across the federal government under President Lyndon Johnson in 1968. They were also widely adopted in the business world and exchanged internationally, and in this way American neoliberal logics and specific policy experiments informed the reshaping of citizenship in Canada.5 As we saw with the rise of QWL, there was certainly an aggressive and actively coercive dimension to these politics. In the same way that union protest was largely and sometimes forcefully disregarded in the effort to reform work, the protests of the poor, women, and other groups at the dismantling of the social right to welfare were sometimes violently sidelined. And yet, in both areas, there were also ‘positive’ programs to the push for change. In other words, neoliberal projects of work and welfare restructuring were not simply destructive efforts to scale back intervention, but reconstructive efforts, which sought to institute new models of normative citizenship. QWL responded to the very real disillusionment with the standardized rudiments of ‘spirit-crushing’ nine-to-five work and called for individual responsibility, creativity, and autonomy. In a similar vein, post-Keynesian critiques of the welfare state responded to the very real paternalism, bureaucracy, and stigmatization of state welfare, critiques that had been largely mounted by the left but which were hijacked and steered into a call for the entrepreneurialism and free spirit of by-your-bootstraps capitalism. Welfare state restructuring that followed these logics started relatively late in Canada compared to the United States and the United Kingdom,
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where Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had mounted sweeping reforms (Lightman and Irving 1990:77). It was the 1985 federal Tory budget under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney that signalled the beginning of this shift with the introduction of selectivity in social policy (Moscovitch 1986:84). The rise of selective or ‘targeted’ social policy is understood to be a core feature of neoliberal citizenship and state forms (Brodie 1997; Rose 1999; Cowen 2005b), and in fact the eclipse of principles of universality and the rise of targeting has been defined as the fundamental shift in the Canadian welfare state over the past few decades (Graham and Querido 2001). A series of dramatic changes to Canada’s system of social welfare followed under both Conservative and Liberal governments that have rearticulated entitlement to social citizenship rights. Federal contributions to health and unemployment were reduced, while federal contributions to unemployment insurance were downloaded to employers and employees (Quaid 2002:47). Family benefits and child tax credits were partially de-indexed, and tax clawbacks on family allowance and old age benefits were introduced. In 1990 unemployment insurance was further restructured with the introduction of new, tighter eligibility criteria and by reducing the benefit period. The introduction of the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST)6 in 1995 is considered the ‘defining moment in the transition from the social to the neoliberal state’ (Brodie 2002:388). The 1999 Social Union Framework Agreement (SUFA) was another milestone in this move towards new forms and scales of governance.7 Normative citizenship is increasingly defined as active and entrepreneurial. Citizenship is transformed from a possession or a right of persons-in-general, to a capacity to be performed through acts of choice (Rose 2000:99). Most profoundly, this has entailed the initiation of a ‘workfarist’ model of citizenship where rights are contingent on labour market participation. A corresponding revival of the distinction between a ‘deserving’ and an ‘undeserving’ poor has taken place. In fact, the attack on entitlement-based social rights is only meaningful if people are considered unworthy. To be part of the deserving poor and so worthy of public assistance, one must be productive in the narrowest sense – employed in the formal labour force. Not even the full-time work of single parenting makes for a reasonable exception. The logic of workfare therefore makes for an intensely punitive and moralizing form of citizenship. It has the effects of hanging citizenship by the tight rope of labour market status at precisely the time when precarious employment is becoming more and
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more prevalent. It thus substitutes economic participation for political belonging in perfect neoliberal form. It also has the effect of making basic human rights of material survival contingent on contribution, thus shattering the notion of rights altogether. Experiments with workfare took place first in the United States, where in 1987 states were granted permission to terminate welfare benefits after a set time. This, in effect, created the possibility for experimentation with welfare-to-work programs, so that by the time President Bill Clinton introduced new welfare reforms with the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, workfare was already in place in forty-six states (Quaid 2002:34). In Canada, workfare has seen a slower but remarkable growth in popularity. Workfare was technically illegal under the 1966 provincial-federal cost-sharing agreement, the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP), which guaranteed a right to welfare on the condition of financial need (Quaid 2002:46–7). The implementation of the Canada Health and Social Transfer abandoned the 50/50 cost-sharing arrangement and left the provinces far more leeway on workfare experiments. There was certainly a good deal of welfare reform and even workfare experiments under way in the provinces before 1996, particularly in Quebec, New Brunswick, and Alberta, but these moves were cautious, governed by the potential loss of federal funds if they went too far. The exception was New Brunswick, which has been identified as the precedent-setting model for the rest of Canada (Mullaly 1997:37). Initiated first as a ‘learnfare’ program under a joint provincial-federal scheme following the 1992 implementation of the Social Assistance Recipient Agreement, this program managed to develop before the termination of CAP by presenting itself as a voluntary alternative to welfare. The increased fiscal pressure on provincial governments as a result of transfer cuts, combined with what was essentially a federal deregulation of entitlement to welfare, led many provinces to experiment with ‘alternatives.’ These experiments varied from cutting welfare rates in some provinces, to increasing the policing of ‘welfare fraud’ in others, and finally to experiments with workfare in provinces such as New Brunswick, Alberta, and Ontario. In Ontario, as in other provinces, debates about welfare reform preceded the implementation of workfare programs by several years. An early interest in welfare reform prompted the 1988 Ontario Liberal document ‘Transitions,’ the report of the Social Assistance Review Committee (SARC), while workfare was initiated under the ‘Ontario Works’ banner in 1995 (Guest 1997). The claim that workfare would be ‘a hand-up
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rather than a hand-out’ came to dominate Conservative political campaigns. While ‘devoid of any particular meaning,’ in Guest’s (1997:85) estimation, this phrase ‘could be all things to all voters – positive, nurturing and supportive to those of liberal inclination, but at the same time, forceful and assertive to those of a more authoritarian bent.’ On a number of occasions, American consultants have been imported to the north to help plan welfare reform in Canadian provinces, while precedent for workfare programs almost always comes from state-level programs in the United States. Lightman (1997:98) outlines the multiple ways in which the U.S. politics of workfare have been directly brought to bear upon these struggles in Canada. He outlines how media participated in this adoption process when reporters were sent ‘to California, Wisconsin, and Detroit among others – to see what they could learn.’ Direct involvement by U.S. bureaucrats and politicians included a town hall forum for which speakers were invited ‘from the Manpower Development Research Corporation (MDRC), the US agency that was evaluating most of the American workfare experiments. A secret full-day workshop was held within the Ministry, attended by the minister, and addressed by another representative of the MDRC and also by Professor Lawrence Mead, a welfare economist from Princeton who was known for his sympathies to coercive welfare.’ U.S. policy and policy makers played more than an indirect role in the Canadian move towards workfare. Remilitarizing Canada? I don’t know all the facts on Iraq, but I think we should work closely with the Americans. (Stephen Harper 2002)8
Having briefly sketched some of the changing dynamics of national work and welfare, a third pivot of this project requires attention: the question of Canada in the world. How are politics beyond national borders reshaping national security, military conflict, and domestic militarism? How are changing conceptions of national security, and specifically economic conceptions of security, reframing official discourse and state practice? This question must be anchored in a discussion of Canada-U.S. relations. The United States is, after all, not just the single most powerful economic and military force globally but also Canada’s ‘next door neighbour,’ ‘best friend,’ and ‘big brother’ (cf. Cowen and Gilbert 2007). What kind of role is Canada defining for
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itself in relation to the United States? How will this shape national practice on the global scene? What are the implications for the future of military citizenship? Canada’s relationship with the United States largely defines the role Canada plays in the world, and this in turn informs citizenship struggles at multiple scales. This is not a one-way street or set path but a bundle of entwined trajectories. Canada’s initial response to the U.S.-led ‘war on terror’ after 2001 was largely uncertain. Caught between long-standing Canadian commitments to international law and order, and equally long-standing commitments to bilateral trade and defence relations with the United States, Canadian leaders struggled to straddle the widening gap. This uncertain and even inconsistent response was particularly striking in the case of Iraq. Then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien officially and publicly refused America’s request for military support, preferring instead to back UN-sanctioned offensives. Canada was celebrated in some circles and chastised in others for what appears to be a firm ethical and political stance taken in relation to the U.S. Empire on which it relies. But the official refusal, while not without symbolic value, was hardly an accurate picture of Canada’s role in this conflict. Not only did Canada quickly deploy troops to Afghanistan in 2001 in support of the broader goals and methods of the U.S.-led ‘war on terror,’ but the Canadian military has also played a significant if highly surreptitious role in Iraq. U.S. officials report that Canada has the fourth largest military presence in Iraq after the United States, Britain, and Australia. The fact that ‘a few Canadian troops are fighting on the ground in Iraq’ is ‘only the tip of the iceberg,’ according to Sanders (2003). Paul Celucci, the former U.S. ambassador to Canada, speaking during his term at Toronto’s Economic Club in 2003, asserted, ‘Canada is currently giving more military support to the US for its war against Iraq than most of the nations that are officially supporting the war.’ The Canadian government and military have been actively supporting the United States in Iraq by providing war planners and exchange personnel, opening Canadian airspace for U.S. flyovers, allowing stopovers for U.S. war planes in St John’s and Stephenville, Newfoundland, for refuelling and crew changes, and supplying the U.S. Department of Defense with munitions and equipment.9 Perhaps most important is the scale of the Canadian naval operation and its role in this offensive. In fact, Canada has been leading a multinational naval task force in the Persian Gulf, where there are 1,300 Canadian troops on three frigates protecting U.S. aircraft carriers and making the offensive possible.10
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This quiet cooperation in Iraq is more broadly characteristic of the Liberal government’s cautious and uncertain relationship to U.S. security and defence plans. While beating the drum of national sovereignty, this government quickly reframed its own policies at the direct behest of the United States. Officials have gone so far as to suggest that deferring to U.S. demands and plans for security is an expression of Canadian sovereignty. As one report of Canada’s Standing Senate Committee on Security and National Defence (SSCOSND) outlined, ‘passivity’ creates risks that ‘the United States will unilaterally move to defend its security perimeter – which it primarily defines as North America – without Canadian knowledge or consent’ (SSCOSND 2002:24). The 2001 Border Security Declaration with the United States, which was expanded into the continental Security and Prosperity Partnership in 2006, the 2001 Bill C-36 – Canada’s anti-terror legislation, and the 2004 National Security Policy entitled ‘Securing an Open Society’ all radically recast Canada’s relationship to the United States, embracing greater cooperation and integration. This contested cooperation with the basic political vision of the United States proceeds apace, in part out of fear of border tightening and economic outfalls of protectionist policies. Canada currently relies on the United States to consume 80 per cent of national exports, as security documents regularly remind us. Indeed, one of four key objectives of Canada’s 2001 Anti-Terrorism Plan, Bill C-36, is ‘to keep the Canada-U.S. border secure and open to legitimate trade.’ Transport Canada, a crucial player in the federal government’s recent security plans, insists that new security requirements introduced as part of its Marine Transport Security Regulations are ‘consistent with the approach of Canada’s major trading partners.’ These are provisions ‘determined to be necessary based on risk assessments and the need to ensure the unimpeded flow of Canadian maritime trade.’ National security is conceptualized as interchangeable with the security of trade flows, and specifically those crucial trade flows with the United States. While economic relations have long been centrally important in defining Canada’s relations to the United States, this conflation of the security of trade and the security of the nation is more recent. Indeed, we can recall the way in which deepening trade relations between the two countries in the post-war period actually fuelled a more defensive nationalism in Canada. This conflation of the protection of trade flows with the security of the nation is perhaps indicative of the changing nature of those trade relations and the growing reach of neoliberal political logics in reconstituting the nature of security threats. As
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Wendy Brown (2005) argues, neoliberal rationality ‘is not merely the result of leakage from the economic to other spheres but rather of the explicit imposition of a particular form of market rationality on these spheres.’ In this context, national security is conceptualized as synonymous with the security of the economy, or at least as an inseparable from its persistent vitality. Canada’s cooperation with domestic security reform also proceeds because the United States has picked particularly sensitive weak spots in the ‘national fabric’ through which to encourage Canadian cooperation. ‘Diversity,’ that fragile organizing framework for Canadian national identity, is itself under attack. As several scholars and activists have noted, Canada’s participation in the ‘war on terror’ has been actively organized through the practice of border controls and deportations ‘at home’ as much as through military intervention abroad (St Lawrence Centre 2006). Citizenship and Immigration Canada may be more central to this war than even the Department of National Defence. Elinor Caplan, Canada’s Minister of Citizenship and Immigration during the critical post-9/11 period, made the direct policy links between security and the work of her ministry crystal clear when she asserted that the ‘events of September 11 have underscored the urgent need to move quickly on security issues.’ Caplan insisted that work on security initiatives was already under way before 2001 but was ‘accelerated with the infusion of new resources.’ She cites the implementation of the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (Bill C-11) as a measure that ‘will further contribute to the security of Canada’s borders.’11 American officials have repeatedly insinuated that the goal of building a multicultural future that celebrates difference may be admirable but is also fundamentally naive in this brave new world of terror. This supposedly outdated idealism, they suggest, has the effect of letting terrorists take advantage of our wide-open, friendly borders. ‘We’ are meant to feel shame that our playful (irresponsible) indulgence in rights might actually endanger more sensible folk. And the ‘we’ that is summoned is clearly the ‘normal folks’ that have been injured by this assault of too much tolerance.12 ‘We’ are also supposed to forget that national myth and national reality surrounding the celebration of diversity are miles apart – an easier jump to make from a distance than for those who live that gap every day. Canadian immigration policy has never been lax. Rather, it has often been more severe, racist, and xenophobic than U.S. policy, and in recent years the rates of detentions
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and deportation have been on the rise (Lyons 2000; Christoff 2005; Gomez 2006). But this historical practice and contemporary reality of tight national borders, and the fact that not a single one of the 9/11 attackers came from Canada, does not often interfere with the myth of a liberal, northern haven for terrorists. This myth has been regularly revived by U.S. officials; for example, the report of the national Commission on Terrorism referred to Canada as a ‘Club Med’ for terrorists and the ‘weakest link in America’s security screen’ (Whitaker 2004:51). The widely heralded ‘death of multiculturalism’ suggests that ideals of tolerance, openness, and difference, which emerged in many liberal states in the post-war period, have largely been abandoned in the context of explicit racial profiling and growing racism and xenophobia. While American critics of Canadian policies suggest that state practice is well intentioned but misguided and certainly too lax, critics from within Canada have gone so far as to blame immigrants for the decline of multiculturalism. For instance, the Fraser Institute, an extreme rightwing think-tank in Alberta, issued a report entitled ‘Canada’s Immigration Policy: The Need for Major Reform,’ which asserts that ‘violence is an unfortunate spin-off of the migration process.’ Author Martin Collacott argues that young immigrant men are particularly compelled to participate in crime and criminal or terrorist networks. One point that ‘deserves further examination is whether, in some instances, problems of crime in a particular community bear a relationship to the immigration category through which many of its members entered Canada’ (Collacott 2002:32). The report furthermore makes strong recommendations on the role of immigration policy in fighting terrorism. Collacott warns of the dangers of immigrants who use ‘this country as a base from which to settle grievances brought with them from their countries of origin,’ and recommends that we should ‘not be reticent’ about demanding a full commitment to Canadian law and Canadian values. ‘Immigrants and members of ethnic minorities should be prepared to work closely with Canadian authorities to keep them apprised of any activities in their midst of a terrorist or criminal nature,’ Collacott cautions (2002:33). Important here is the way in which charges of Canada’s ‘leaky border’ have mobilized the support of various right-wing and neoconservative politicians and security lobbies within Canada, and serve to galvanize their legitimacy at home. A pro-war, pro-security lobby has been building in defence and security think-tanks, and without irony in far-right political groups that are usually known for their libertarian
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anti-state ideas. National defence appears to be the only area of government where big spending and lots of public employees are applauded. Indeed, defence is an area that remains a strong national priority on the agendas of global trade agreements; military policy, for example, is one of the only areas of national government exempted from the World Trade Organization (Bakan 2003). The defence lobby has proponents scattered across the country, but the vast majority have a home base in Alberta, the ‘Texas of the North.’ As the home turf of ‘western alienation’ with a distinct economic history organized around generous oil reserves and livestock trade, Alberta has been the storm trooper of both neoliberal politics and policies in Canada, and its politicians have been outspoken in support of American ambitions. The distinct style of Albertan politics is well known in Canada and abroad. Stephen Harper, a former Canadian Alliance member, and Canada’s current Conservative Party prime minister, has written: ‘The world is now unipolar and contains only one superpower. Canada shares a continent with that superpower. In this context, given our common values and the political, economic and security interests that we share with the United States, there is now no more important foreign policy interest for Canada than maintaining the ability to exercise effective influence in Washington so as to advance unique Canadian policy objectives.’13 The map shown in Plate 7.1, for instance, was circulated internationally through online networks after the 2004 U.S. election and with humour shows Alberta as one of the few political territories on the planet that has ‘voted’ for the current U.S. regime. Alberta is singled out in Canada; included in the global minority Bush camp. The simultaneous attack on social welfare and support for national warfare consistently coalesce in the politics of this province. The Reform Party, which started as a ‘grassroots,’ extreme-right movement, emerged out of the particular political and cultural economy of Alberta. Consistent with what Loic Wacquant (1999) has described as a shift from a ‘politics of welfare’ to a ‘penitentiary state,’ the Alberta ethos combines big guns with little taxes, and in fact has prided itself on the achievement of dismantling universal citizenship rights. In a 1994 speech, Harper claims that ‘universality has been severely reduced: it is virtually dead as a concept in most areas of public policy … These achievements are due in part to the Reform Party.’14 Harper has furthermore exacerbated regional strife in Canada, pitting the entrepreneurial spirit and economic success of Alberta against ‘the culture of defeatism’ in Atlantic Canada, and blaming anti-war
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Plate 7.1 The Global Map of U.S. Party Politics Source: http://www.bopnews.com/archives/002314.html (accessed 12 May 2004).
sentiments on the peculiar and particular politics of French Canada. In 2003 Harper explained that ‘there are Canadians who oppose the invasion,’ but he insisted, ‘they are a minority, as are those who are antiAmerican. It certainly exists. But in fairness, there’s an anti-American sentiment among the American left in the United States itself. We have some of that here. But that’s a minority sentiment.’ Only in Quebec, with its ‘pacifist tradition,’ are most people opposed to the war, Harper said. ‘Outside of Quebec, I believe very strongly the silent majority of Canadians is strongly supportive.’15 Whitaker (2004:51) observes that many of the strongest critiques of Canadian policy in relation to the ‘war on terror’ are Canadian, not American. He reports that ‘when Congressman Smith held hearings in Washington on the security threat posed to the United States by Canadian laxity, some of the testimony most sharply critical of Canadian policy and practices came from Canadians, from conservative thinktanks and from private security agencies.’ Whitaker further explains the important role that Cold War defence agreements between Canada and the United States have played in creating this powerful lobby within the country. As a substantially smaller military power in continental defence agreements, Canada was put in a position of largely adopting U.S. decisions regarding equipment, training, and operations uncritically. Whitaker (2004:44) argues that this has had the effect of making core parts of the Canadian military command into ‘a willing conduit within the Canadian state for promotion of American strategic
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military perspectives. That ministers of defence have tended to act as advocates within the Canadian cabinet for American military perspectives is less a matter of personality and philosophical conviction than of representation of interest.’ The defence lobby has been actively producing a string of reports, newspaper articles, and books outlining the crisis of Canadian sovereignty and the Canadian military, and arguing for a restoration of the former through investment in the latter. J.L. Granatstein has been particularly prolific in this regard. The co-chair of a lobby group, the Council for Canadian Security, Granatstein is also a Canadian historian who has long been an active advocate of the military and an aggressive opponent of various forms of critical scholarship, in particular poststructuralism, Marxism, and feminism.16 Granatstein offered the following advice in his recent polemic Who Killed the Canadian Military? (2004:238): We Canadians always assume that we live in God’s country and that we will always be secure and safe, well protected in our prosperity. But the world is still a dangerous place – after September 11, who can doubt it? At some point, Canada’s national interests will require us to be prepared to fight to protect our security, and it won’t help us much then to prattle about our values and principles to those who would do us harm. We need a capable Canadian Forces to fight for us, and it is only sensible today to prepare for whatever the future may bring. If we pay now in dollars, we may not have to pay so heavily in the future with the lives of our young men and women. Canadians, it’s up to us.
In his attempt to speak for ‘the nation,’ Granatstein entirely avoids the fact that the most likely Canadian victims of terrorism are the men who have been held for years without charges by the Canadian state on security certificates, or those who have been deported with the aid of their own government to face torture in countries like Syria, such as Maher Arar. He not only implicitly denies their voices as Canadian but also exploits popular insecurity in a highly irresponsible way by threatening civilians with abstract apocalypse. The Canadian Alliance, the interim incarnation of the Reform Party prior to its ‘merger’ with the longestablished Conservative Party, also made this kind of threatening call with its pro-military media blitz in 2001 (Centre for Military and Strategic Studies 2001). Following its merger with the Conservatives, the party issued articles claiming that military underfunding was ‘damaging
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Canada’ (CBC 2002). The Conference of Defence Associations, another defence lobby group, issued a study in conjunction with the Defence Management Studies program at Queen’s University titled ‘Canada without Armed Forces?’ The report threatened Canadians with the prospect of a grim military future and the dismantling of the individual armed services if funding levels for the CF weren’t seriously augmented (Canada.com 2003). Defence lobbyists also began issuing repeated critiques of the deteriorating quality of CF housing and lifestyles, even calling military family communities ‘ghettoes’ (Storey 1998). I will return to the question of military personnel shortly, but first the effects of this lobby on the politics of national security in Canada demand closer scrutiny. Lobbyists’ arguments had impact. While the fervour of the defence lobby campaigns has intensified with the initiation of the U.S.-led ‘war on terror,’ lobbyists actually began organizing for change in the 1990s. After decades of budget stasis and cutbacks, the Department of National Defence has experienced consecutive budget increases since 1998. This fact is directly tied to the growing power of the Reform/ Alliance and now Conservative Party in national politics. Its aggressive advocacy for military spending is evident, for example, in the lobbying at SCONDVA, where it helped to produce the landmark 1998 report ‘Moving Forward: A Strategic Plan for Quality of Life Improvements in the Canadian Forces.’ The rising profile of the military in Canadian political discourse was stark in the 2004 Liberal Speech from the Throne. The speech, delivered by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, set out the broad agenda for Canada’s Thirty-Eighth Parliament, and signals the high priority of national security and defence in a variety of ways. First, the document opens with a tribute to Canada’s brave veterans and soldiers, connecting the legacy of historical and contemporary soldiers and asserting their role as valuable national citizens: This year, Canadians commemorated the 60th anniversary of D-Day and the landing of allied forces in Europe – an event that spelled the beginning of the end of the Second World War. Canadian soldiers, sailors and aircrews fought with dogged bravery and were ultimately victorious on Juno Beach that day … On these occasions, we are reminded of the huge debt we owe to those in uniform who have served this country – then and today. Our veterans connect generations and Canadians. As a country and as individuals, we gain in pride and in purpose from their deeds and their service. (Canada, 2004d)
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The speech reiterates the commitment to expand the CF, to strengthen the relationship with the United States, and even to work towards the creation of a new national service for youth, called the ‘Canada Corps.’ The Canada Corps remains a vague and undefined concept in the document, with no indication of its role, size, or management; nevertheless, the speech suggests that it will be an institution that teaches citizenship to young Canadians. More recently, with the federal election of Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party to office in 2006, Canada’s military has become a top public priority. Canada has taken the lead in the operations in Afghanistan, with Canadian Brigadier-General David Fraser serving as Commander of the Canadian-led Multinational Brigade for Regional Command South in Afghanistan. Prime Minister Harper made a visit to Canadian personnel in Kandahar immediately following his election to cement the support of his government for U.S. military ambitions. Despite polls reporting popular opposition to further troop deployment in the range of 70 per cent, more than 2,000 additional troops were deployed in March of the same year (CTV 2006b). In May 2006, just days after a major national poll announced that a majority of Canadians opposed the mission in Afghanistan (CTV 2006c), Canadian Members of Parliament passed a motion to extend the mission until 2009 by the narrow margin of 149–145 votes. A flurry of newspaper articles and polls told of growing opposition following this motion (Canadian Press 2006). Despite what seems to be a major break with the election of the Conservative government on military and security matters, public support seems as uncertain as ever. But perhaps even more important, there are clear continuities between Liberal and Conservative approaches to security and defence matters as largely economic calculations. Both Liberal and Conservative policies rationalize securitization in the interest of trade security and seek to protect the nation from disrupted economic relations with the United States. If there are continuities in the broader discourses of security that inform apparently distinct and competing political networks and projects, then the Harper government has distinguished itself in the more specific ways it has reconstituted the role of the military and the public image of soldiers. Perhaps with the goal of shattering what he once termed the country’s ‘weak nation strategy’ in foreign policy, Harper has authorized a new direction for the CF. Beyond stepping up Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan and its share of the domestic budget, the Conservatives have also worked to toughen up the CF and
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shed its long-honed identity as an institution of benevolent peacekeepers. In the fall of 2006, the CF launched an aggressive new recruitment campaign. The Canadian Muslim Congress criticized the campaign for war mongering while NDP defence critic Dawn Black critiqued the ‘Rambo ads,’ which were unrecognizable in relation to established CF imagery and identity. Not surprisingly, Granatstein applauded the new campaign, adding that ‘the peacekeeping mythology has been a terrible drag on us’ (Duffy 2007). The campaign was part of a $15.5 million effort to boost enlistment and change the public image of Canadian military work (CTV 2006d). It is notable that the ads were released first in Atlantic Canada. ‘The economically-challenged area’ is already providing a disproportionate number of soldiers, and yet the military is eager to demonstrate how it ‘can offer an exciting, rewarding career’ to this already responsive region (CTV 2006d). Ironically, while the campaign seeks to restore a more ‘traditional’ warrior image to the military, it was officially conceived in the highly current marketing language of ‘branding.’ This ‘rebranding’ of the Forces was furthermore conceptualized through marketing techniques such as focus groups and other kinds of consumer research techniques (Duffy 2007). The campaign aims to shift the way that prospective applicants and the general public see soldiers while also massively expanding the military’s public profile. Bob Bergen, a research fellow with the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute at the University of Calgary, has explained the campaign as part of the military’s growing awareness of the importance of public relations for its own future budget. Bergen explains that ‘politicians won’t do anything that there isn’t a public demand for … They know they have to get their message through to the public’ (Duffy 2007). Stephen Harper needs little convincing when it comes to celebrating soldiers, although his successors may yet. In an intriguing speech given to the graduates of a basic infantry soldier course at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright in April 2006,17 Prime Minister Harper exclaimed that soldiering is the ‘highest calling of citizenship, not because you are ready to die for your country, though every soldier is prepared to do that. No, it is the highest calling of citizenship because you are ready to live for your country.’ No doubt in part a response to the growing numbers of deaths and injuries in Afghanistan and both the concern for and opposition to the mission, national newspapers now carry front-section and often front-page coverage of military operations on a daily basis. In part a response to popular concern for the growing number of soldiers’ deaths and injuries, this coverage also
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carries populist rants of journalists sympathetic to the defence lobby that revalorize a highly masculine warrior.18 The contemporary resurgence of national militarism is thus occurring through direct channels of national security policy, border control, and military investment and deployments, but it is also taking place through a concerted cultural celebration and commemoration of past military feats. Remembrance Day events have become a powerful means of mobilizing national military sentiment and have led to the invention of new traditions such as the placement of poppies on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa, ‘a tradition that began when the Tomb was installed on May 28, 2000’ (Globe 2004). Military Workfare? The concurrent rise of workfare and the rekindling of a national security and defence agenda are contested by activists working on many fronts, and yet they appear to be proceeding apace. However, I am not arguing that we have entered a definite and explicit ‘regime’ of military workfare. There is no specific proposal being promoted in government or industry on the role of the military as an employer for unemployed or underemployed workers, or that directly identifies the military as a workfare project. There is no document that calls for mandatory military work for the poor. In fact, there are few direct links between the expansion of military welfare and the rise of civilian workfare. And yet, these shifts are nevertheless deeply connected and fuelling each other in definite but subtle ways. Beyond the important relationship of welfare to war work described at length in these pages, positing the military as a form of workfare is compelling given the long-standing role of the armed forces as a lastditch employer for the unemployed. The military has provided an alternative to civilian unemployment for thousands and thousands of Canadians for decades. I mentioned that the proportion of applicants to the military who were unemployed reached above 50 per cent in the early 1970s. In 1999 that figure was still at the extraordinarily high rate of almost 40 per cent (Canada 2000:10). The CF claims to not compile these statistics in any systematic way; however, there is every indication that the figures are typical. These long-term and systemic relationships between military work and the unemployed, or what Marx termed ‘the reserve army of labour,’ are suggestive. Marx described how an ‘industrial reserve army’ comes into existence when traditional
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means of production are abolished, and that this ‘army’ ensures a supply of cheap and disciplined labour essential to further industrial growth. Ironically, it appears that Marx’s reserve army may also be an essential source of labour for the actual army, in particular since the abandonment of the Keynesian goal of full employment and the institution of workfarist policy.19 Equally important is the contemporary restructuring of the values, norms, and expectations of citizenship. Discursive shifts in the politics of entitlement have also created direct connections between the military and the current restructuring of work and welfare. In fact, in recent years the soldier has become something of an iconic figure of the deserving poor. In April 2000 newspapers across Canada carried a story spun by the Canadian Alliance, which asserted that prisoners in Canada were leading better lives than soldiers. Art Hanger, defence critic for the Canadian Alliance party, claimed that soldiers were living in ‘squalor,’ while ‘convicted murderers’ were ‘living lives of luxury in cottage-style correctional facilities’ (Calgary Herald 2000). Meanwhile, neoconservative Alliance MP Myron Thompson criticized this supposed gulf between the welfare of soldiers and inmates on the grounds that ‘one group has endangered society while the other group has preserved it’ (Calgary Herald 2000). With little factual evidence ever presented, even the Department of National Defence, which stood to gain from the controversy, disputed the coverage. Media coverage provoked public moral outrage anchored in judgments about who deserves to benefit from public funds. Tempers flared at the perceived grandeur and luxury of criminal lifestyles behind bars, in contrast with the poverty of service people who put their lives on the line for the national good. Pitting the soldier – the citizen associated with sacrifice, and historically the most entitled to welfare benefits – against the criminal – possibly the figure most likely to spur resentment rather than collective care – was a potent move. Prisoners have become the category of citizen most readily deprived of entitlement to public goods.20 Inmates are increasingly expected to work for their keep in the private prisons that are ever more common in Canada following practices in the United States.21 In fact, prisons in the United States have even begun charging inmates room and board.22 Juxtaposing the welfare of the soldier and the prisoner helped galvanize support for reinvestment in the CF and also exploited and expedited an emergent, populist neoliberal workfare ethic that was fed up with ‘welfare bums,’ ‘cheats,’ and those
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who leech off the ‘public purse.’ This relatively minor event nevertheless served to help reinstitutionalize notions of a deserving and an undeserving poor, and thus contributed significantly to broader discursive shifts in social and economic life. Since this media event, there has also been regular coverage of military welfare in several leading newspapers. The ‘ghetto’ conditions of housing and community life have captured the imagination of reporters and readers alike in dozens of news stories since the late 1990s. This simultaneous dismantling of civilian welfare and expansion of military welfare is striking in a number of national contexts. As I outlined in Chapter 1, record numbers of civilians are currently living without health insurance in the United States, while the military is expanding health coverage for personnel and their families as an incentive for service.23 Investment in education has been militarized in a variety of ways. For schools to access funds under the ‘No Child Left Behind’ education initiative, they must release student information to Department of Defense recruiters. Meanwhile, schools on military bases have been exempted from the 2002 Education Act, which makes federal funding contingent on strict performance indicators. Several countries have begun contemplating using workfare workers for support services on military bases, and debates are taking place in the Netherlands regarding the rights of workfare workers to decline an offer of a contract from the military. Treanor (2001) writes, ‘Military service, which had been abolished in the Netherlands, is now also compulsory for the unemployed, if the Army offers a contract.’ While this is largely an accidental effect of new workfare regulations, the fact that military workfare is surfacing as a possibility merits attention in itself. This potential emerges out of the logic of workfare, which posits everyone as a producer and consumer in the economy rather than a member of a political collective. Certainly post-war ‘worker-citizenship’ was also organized around a logic of political and economic belonging through work; however, it was a collectivized notion where risk and security were nationalized. Within a workfare framework, responsibility is rescaled. Individuals are expected to serve their community in exchange for support. With workfare, the logic of being an individuated ‘employee of the nation’ is laid bare, forging a direct connection to the figure of the soldier. In many ways, soldier citizenship has become the celebrated economic and political ‘space’ of the deserving poor. History and geography may limit educational and employment opportunities for large
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numbers of poor and working-class kids, but the military always has its doors open to good men, and now women, who are willing to work hard for their keep. Young people from de-industrialized regions and formerly resource-dependent communities have been offered a bargain that is difficult to refuse when it is one of the only offers on the table. Neoliberal workfarism and national militarism, combined, instruct the nation’s poor to sacrifice and serve, and in exchange they will receive services. Generalizing an Exceptional Figure? I have argued that social citizenship and the welfare state as we have known them in Canada emerged out of mass warfare when a model of national worker-citizenship, built around the figure of the soldier, was assembled and generalized to the civilian population. The current conjuncture may be characterized by the dispersion of a different dimension of the same basic model of military citizenship. Rather than the element of collectivized entitlement premised on national labour, it is today those exceptional qualities that render the soldier ineligible for basic rights of citizenship that are increasingly evident in civilian citizenship. Huntington (1957) argued that the soldier is outside of citizenship because he or she is governed by laws, duties, expectations, economies, and cultures that are antithetical to liberal and democratic membership in a capitalist political economy. In particular, political and economic rights are suspended for soldiers, who cannot unionize or practise work politically, and who aren’t subject to labour law in any meaningful way. This exceptional existence is becoming increasingly normal. In an era of citizenship largely defined by the emergence of workfare, the state of exception that has governed the soldier seems to be generalized for others. Like soldiers, workfare workers are also subject to the suspension of political and economic rights. They may not form unions, they are not entitled to minimum wages, and they are certainly excluded from countless state, provincial, national, and supranational constitutions, conventions, and declarations that guarantee some level of health, safety, and security for citizens. A growing list of exceptions for a growing group of citizens is taking shape despite legal challenges and public protest,24 while democratic citizenship is itself perhaps becoming the exception. A number of scholars have argued that the refugee is the quintessential figure of exception in contemporary politics (Agamben 1998;
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Daly 2004; Diken 2004; Genel 2006). The refugee marks the crisis of the sovereign state and at the same time lays bare its norms, structure, logic, and laws. The refugee – the figure of bare life, most in need of rights and protections – emerges as the symptom of the system of sovereign nation states wherein human rights are entirely predicated on the necessity of national belonging (Arendt 1951). These arguments are compelling and yield valuable political insight. But there is also much to be gained by considering the soldier as a figure of exception, differently but deeply entwined with the refugee in the context of the biopolitical national state that can ‘make live or let die’ (cf. Foucault 1997). The soldier can be understood as a figure of exception in the constitution of democratic citizenship, in the same way other scholars have interrogated war as a state of exception in the constitution of ‘peace.’ Today, in the context of the changing nature of warfare, Hardt and Negri (2004:7) have argued that ‘the state of exception has become permanent and general; the exception has become the rule.’ This begs the question: Will the figure of exception also become general? Will the un-citizen of rights and democracy become the rule of neoliberal citizenship?
Conclusion: Neoliberal Military Citizenship?
This book takes the labour and citizenship of the soldier seriously. Rather than position this figure as the exception to sacred rules and rights, I have considered how the soldier has historically been a model upon which they were built. I have argued that welfarist forms of citizenship have their origins in times of war, in the image of the war worker-citizen. The soldier is not a figure associated with democracy or political rights – defining features of modern politics in Western nations. And yet, paradoxically, it was through the mass sacrifice of the population in service to the nation during the Second World War that post-war citizenship was assembled. Welfare was a reward for the serving citizen, and a means to harness the labour and allegiance of a divided population for the nation. Social entitlements were institutionalized in the welfare state but had their genesis in national war work. New practices of this magnitude could not refrain from reshaping the practitioners themselves, and ironically, the dramatic impacts of the mass military on citizenship are centrally responsible for the eventual decline of militarism in Canada. By collectivizing risk, expanding education, and nationalizing politics and culture, the welfare state reshaped the geographies of work and the orientations and identities of citizens, such that today the military histories of citizenship are hidden in plain view. If the soldier performed as iconic national workercitizen during the Second World War, he or she now stands astride what is perhaps a closing gap between an expanding workfarism and a resurgent militarism. Many scholars identify the shift from welfare to workfare as a recent and defining feature of neoliberal government; however, I suggest that work as a condition for welfare has a long military history that persisted through the relatively brief life of the welfare state. Key welfare
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policies were initiated as incentives for nationally valued forms of work, and a work/welfare relationship has been continuous within the armed forces. The rights of social citizenship were in large part a longterm and collective payment for the sacrifices and demands of the national worker-citizen during mass war. In this way, the duty of defence of national citizenship contributed centrally and directly to the rise of the social right to national welfare. I have furthermore attempted to outline how brief the lifespan has been of some key institutions and practices associated with Keynesian welfarism. Many of these cornerstones of national welfare were exhausted after less than thirty or forty years of life. Yet, if we consider only the case of civilian welfare we miss a crucial piece of the picture – the historical precedent and contemporary expansion of (national) welfare for service personnel. ‘Universal’ civilian welfare becomes more of an anomaly than a norm, and particular to the politics and geography of the post-war nation state. An analysis of military welfare yields unique insights given the military’s role as both an international and a domestic actor. Debates about the decline of the welfare state are often split between those who argue for ‘internal’ explanations – greater claims by women, ethno-racial minorities, and other ‘others’ on the promise of ‘inclusion’ – and those who emphasize ‘external’ factors such as the increasing transnational movement of capital and the international division of labour. The military spans the borders of the territorially organized nation-state system. As a domestic institution, labour force, and international actor, the national military doesn’t allow for any simple separation of inside/outside. It becomes impossible to divorce the contemporary expansion of military welfare from either the international context of Canadian commitments to NORAD, NATO, and the ‘war on terror,’ or the domestic geographies of economies, cosmopolitanism and immigration, changing gender norms, and so on. Military citizenship clearly takes shape in relation to all these factors and allows for an empirical analysis of the entwined production of macro and micro political spaces. But the military is not only important in the way it spans these spaces. When we adopt a historical perspective it becomes clear that the military has been crucial in defining the national political geographies within which these categories have any meaning. It is this productive dimension of the military through war, its role in both the most blunt territorialization of the nation state and its direct impact on
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institutions that organized national identity, which makes it so relevant for an analysis of citizenship. Thinking war through peace and the military through labour and citizenship, as I have done here, means that we must consider the complex ways that war informs everyday life. But perhaps more important, thinking war through peace also requires that we uncover the ways in which the demand for allegiance to national war becomes a means of denying the struggles of those who contest the ‘domestic’ social order, even as it serves to re/constitute them. Declaring war as ‘a nation’ relies on the prior and ongoing domination of difference and denial or deferral of ‘wars’ within. I need only recall J.L. Granatstein’s arguments to bolster defence spending in the name of our collective security, while denying the fact that the most pertinent threats to many Canadians’ security are the racialized practices of the Canadian security state. The tensions between the wars that traverse the national social body and the ones that are fought on its behalf constitute a central political problem of this research. More specifically, the relations that were established during mid-century mass war between citizens, workers, and government were rolled into post-war citizenship. The military was in many ways the model for social welfare provision and left its mark on the post-war model of ‘male breadwinner’ worker-citizenship. This supported the post-war iconicity of the soldier and his presence in all the major institutions of social life. A militarized culture planned the family home, attended church and school, guided Boy Scouts and sports teams, and explained the wilderness to citizens, but was simultaneously involved in disciplining, ‘civilizing,’ excluding, and exploiting Aboriginals, people of colour, and women. The early 1970s was a moment of tremendous change as the military began to study struggles within the nation in relation to its own crisis of recruitment. It did so tactically, as if engaged in battle, and one that it increasingly saw itself losing. The politics and economies of military recruitment became a measure of the military’s declining status. The extension of social policy to civilians since the war was a central feature of its waning cultural and political capital. Paradoxically, when military social technologies migrated to ‘society’ at large, citizens became hostile to war work. The subject of social welfare, the ‘universal,’ rights-bearing, educated, and entitled citizen, increasingly eschewed the discipline and hierarchy of military life. The military’s struggle for survival through recruitment was deeply connected to the struggles that were under way in Canada for justice
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and the expansion of citizenship rights. The military shifted tactics and tried to win its war against operational failure and political obsolescence in new ways. The military imagined itself trapping groups of people as if it were trapping game (imagined as a ‘harvest of species’). Citizens that were once constituted beyond the boundaries of military belonging gradually became military ‘targets.’ The CF added additional strategies to its arsenal as it became more and more aware of the long-term nature of its decline. It began to mimic rather than fight the civilian practices and people that were making it marginal, for example, with initiatives to make the military less militaristic by improving the ‘Quality of Working Life.’ Meanwhile, the CF also initiated a plan to distinguish itself among employers by expanding military welfare or ‘Quality of Life.’ All this, combined with the collapse of welfarist, rights-based citizenship, has created a tremendous opportunity for the military. The soldier who works for welfare provides a model of the deserving citizen that welds domestic neoliberal and workfarist citizenship to the new landscape of pre-emptive, perpetual, and often ‘post-national’ war. The wide-ranging political, economic, and cultural transformations brought on by mass war and the emergence of the welfare state fuelled an extensive reorganization of work and life in Canada. Ironically, civilian welfare came to undermine recruitment by directly reducing material incentives for enlistment. Indirectly, the extension of civilian training and education also undermined the military in that it helped give rise to the more educated, professional, and urbanized worker-citizens who became inaccessible to the military. Since the 1960s, the increasingly narrow recruitment base for the Canadian military has taken on a distinct geography of race and class, articulated through a growing urban/rural rift. And while the military has fought hard to expand out of the low-skills ‘ghettoes’ of rural, small-town, and Atlantic Canada, it has simultaneously exploited every advantage and every recruit that this labour geography brings. The CF has made the diversification of the social and spatial dimensions of its recruit base a central priority for the future; however, it has also recently abolished the geographical recruitment quotas that were put in place specifically to ensure a regional distribution of national sacrifice and opportunity (Canada 2004e). The CF claims that the quota system had become obsolete because ‘surpluses would be at some locations and they would be forced to wait while other regions worked to fill the spaces. And many would drop out of the process’ (Canada 2004e). This argument
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is circular given that the entire rationale for geographical quotas would be to regulate geographical unevenness in recruitment. To cite this as a reason to terminate the quotas suggests that the military has resigned itself to accept this geographical unevenness, and may be willing to deepen it. The deepening of regional recruitment patterns was apparently embraced in the recent ‘rebranding’ of the military, as the new 2006 campaign was deliberately launched in the CF’s traditional recruiting stronghold of Atlantic Canada. Although the military is highly constrained by its limited recruitment base, it would have virtually no soldiers if it did not exploit the willing war workers that do enlist, whatever part of (rural, Atlantic, declining, white) Canada they may be from. In addition to the expansion of benefits to draw in new recruits, I have outlined how the CF has made elaborate attempts to mediate core features of military service over the past two decades. Efforts to moderate the demands of discipline, conformity, and even nationalism have been under way, and new images of military service have been constructed on the grounds of global justice, multicultural leadership, and service to self through education and improvement. And yet, despite the production of a new image of the soldier as educated, transnational patriot, the old core principles of military service persist, in conflict with these new ideals. The first ‘ethical principle’ of military service in Canada, after all, remains to ‘serve Canada before self’ (Canada 2002a:3). New recruitment techniques borrowed from the business world are supposed to mediate these fundamental contradictions as they intensify the marketization of defence. The CF proudly proclaims its recent initiatives in this area, which include the provision of ‘sales training’ to all recruiters, the use of on-line applications systems, and the ‘branding’ of the Forces. If the military is to re-establish anything like its former cultural iconicity or labour force centrality, these gimmicks will likely play only a marginal role. Much more important in this regard is the broader restructuring of work, welfare, and geopolitical conflict that is under way and the rise of military neoliberalism at home, which do suggest a potentially promising future for a rejuvenated national military. Military futures also rely on Canada’s relationship to the United States, and this too suggests a potentially expansive future for the CF. The complicated and often resistant Canadian allegiance to the American Empire should not blind us to the underlying cooperation that proceeds apace in bilateral defence and security policies and operations,
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which become more and more explicit every day. Popular anti-Americanism and anti-war sentiments will not in themselves prevent strong military and security support from proceeding. There is precedent for Canada’s simultaneously rebellious and cooperative relationship to the United States in the Cold War, and this increasingly appears to be the route taking shape today. As Deleuze suggests, the task before us is ‘not to predict but to be attentive to the unknown which knocks at the door’ (1992b:165). Prediction provides a basis upon which people can prepare for a particular destiny and in this way privileges outcomes over political process. Thus, prediction makes present a future. My aim here is not to predict and help people prepare, but to sound sirens that might focus attention and provoke new thought and action that could take us elsewhere. The future is not set but actively and continuously produced out of social work and political struggle. It is in the context of ominous politicalgeographic trajectories – but with absolute conviction that these trajectories can be trounced – that I write. And indeed, the need to wrench social citizenship from neoliberal markets and militaries is urgent. For as we race competitively, in bold entrepreneurial spirit into the twentyfirst century, the soldier – the exceptional, sacrificing worker who was a model in the assemblage of post-war social government – haunts us with newfound vitality.
Notes
1. Introduction: The Soldier and the Social 1 As Segal (1989:91) explains, ‘Previously neglected interests, some of which had been brought together by their common opposition to the Vietnam War, became mobilized as social movements seeking access to various citizenship rights and entitlements. Most notable were the civil-rights movement and the women’s movement, which demanded and received increased educational and employment opportunities for their constituencies.’ In 1950 veterans’ programs and civilian education programs each accounted for approximately 28 per cent of the federal public welfare budget. Yet, by 1960 veterans’ program budgets had declined 10 per cent while civilian budgets reached 37 per cent of expenditure in this area. 2 Community Development Workers have been employed by the RAF since 2003; see http://www.airwavesforfamilies.com/. 3 In 2003 the U.S. Congress authorized a significant expansion of TRICARE, the military’s health-care benefit service. 4 But see Moreno and McEwen (2003) and Brodie (2002) for recent and welcome exceptions. 5 See Harvey 1973; Massey 1977; Smith 1984; Mackenzie 1989; Soja 1989; Lefebvre 1991; Gregory 1994; McDowell 1999; Sharpe et al. 2000; Elden 2001; Isin 2002; and Thrift 2006. 6 This includes provoking a militarized skirmish with Denmark over a tiny island in the North. In April 2006 Greenland requested UN intervention to help settle a long-standing dispute between Canada and Denmark over the 1.3 km2 Hans Island, located between Canada’s Ellesmere Island and Greenland.
262 Notes to pages 25–6 2. The (Military) Labour of Social Citizenship 1 Levittown, the iconic subdivision of the post–Second World War period, can also be considered in large part a military innovation. Bill Levitt developed his technique of mass-produced, standardized housing construction while building 2,350 housing units for the U.S. navy during the Second World War. ‘Armed with this ability, he decided after the war to apply the same techniques to creating massive housing divisions at the outskirts of cities’ (Brunn and Crosby 1999:677). For details about military ‘innovations’ in city planning in the United States, see Light (2002). 2 The computer game company SEGA, for example, stands for ‘service games’ and was a product of the U.S. Department of Defense. Most important for the current era is probably the invention of computer technologies and the Internet by the American military and its research affiliates. A complete inventory of technological innovations developed by militaries could probably rival this dissertation in length, but a useful historical source is Low (1943). 3 Harrison and Laliberté (1994) note that developments made by Frederick the Great in ranks, uniforms, rule, and specialized tasks for the Prussian army in the late eighteenth century were subsequently adopted by industrialists. 4 Trotsky (1971) writes, ‘Hitherto, only the War Department has had experience in the sphere of the registration, mobilization, formation and transference from one place to another of large masses of people. These technical methods and practices were, to a considerable extent, inherited by our War Department from the past. In the economic sphere there is no such heritage, since what operated previously in that sphere was the principle of private rights, and labour-power made its way from the market to each enterprise separately. It is consequently natural that, if so obliged, we should, at least during the initial period, make extensive use of the apparatus of the War Department for labour mobilization.’ 5 In a chapter titled ‘The Genesis of Military and Industrial Organization,’ van Doorn (1975) notes the striking convergence in practices in military and industrial organizational forms in seventeenth-century Europe. He writes, ‘It is very interesting to observe that the more rational organization of the army – which began in several countries, but in the Dutch Republic in particular, around 1600 – and three centuries later, of industry, show similar characteristics which sometimes agree even in detail ... The similarity in approach is immediately obvious, and can be best demonstrated by an analysis of the procedures of such seemingly incomparable figures as Maurice of Orange, the founder of the “classical” military organization,
Notes to pages 27–56 263
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and the American engineer Taylor, the man of “scientific management”’ (11). Van Doorn provides detail on the confluence in the broad approach to manipulating human behaviour, as well as in the detail of their techniques in the de- and re-composition of human labour into its components of movement. See also DeLanda (2005), who documents the migration of military forms of work discipline to industry, and between Europe and North America. In this piece DeLanda demonstrates that key technologies that gave rise to Taylorism had their genesis in modern European militaries. This body of literature is enormous and growing, but for some helpful benchmarks, see Harvey 1973; Massey 1977, 2005; Smith 1984; Mackenzie 1989; Soja 1989; Lefebvre 1991; Gregory 1994; Thrift 1996; McDowell 1999; Sharpe et al. 2000; Elden 2001; and Isin 2002. For some classic pieces, see Smith 1984, 1993, 2002; Herod 1991; Jessop 1994; Swyngedouw 1997; Marston 2000; Herod and Wright 2002; and Brenner 1998, 2004. See Featherstone 1990; Hobsbawm 1990; Fox 1990; Anderson 1992; Billig 1993; Buck-Morss 2000; Steinmetz 2001; Risse 2003; and Sharma 2006. On contemporary relationships between war and nation building, see Koonings (2002). For Foucault’s earliest but brief discussion of this concept, see volume 1 of the History of Sexuality. For further discussion about biopolitics and war, see Foucault (1997). ‘Extracts from the Report of the Committee on the Conditions of Service of Officers of the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force’ (Restructuring of the Militia Pension Act), July 1938. Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG24, vol. 8114, file 1280-232. ‘The Child as an Asset,’ Social Welfare, 1918, p. 36, cited in Guest (1997:50). LAC, RG24, vol. 3374, file 433-3-6, vol. 2. Ibid. Ibid. Prentice (1996) describes the Dominion-Provincial Day Nurseries Agreement of 1943, a federal-provincial cost-sharing program that established public day nurseries, childcare centres, and school feeding programs, as one of the more useful by-products of the Second World War. Federal funding for the program was terminated in 1946, ‘on the grounds that child care was not a “peacetime concern.”’ Ernest Maury, superintendent of the Nipissing wartime local DBT, cited in Christie (2000:266). See, for example, Estévez-Abe 1999; Evans and Wekerle 1997; Gordon 1990; Gottfried and O’Reilly 2002; and Porter 2003.
264 Notes to pages 56–74 19 Women participated in lively public debates about their post-war work and life in myriad forums, for instance, in the July 1945 Canadian Home Journal. McInnis (2002:26) cites a survey conducted by the Toronto Reconstruction Council, which found that only 5 per cent of unmarried women, and less than half of married women, would voluntarily end their careers after the war. 3. Post-War Citizenship: Mass and Militarized 1 I return to this racialization of national identity below, but for a more thorough treatment, see Ishikawa (2003) and McCallister (1999) on the internment of Japanese Canadians; and Mongia (2003), Rose (2003), and Isin and Turner (2003) on the relational and racialized construction of national citizenship. 2 Canada did institute a National Selective Service during the war, but those who served in an involuntary capacity were small in numbers and performed only domestic duties. The primary reliance on voluntary military labour was a response to the volatility of domestic language politics. During the First World War, riots broke out in Quebec in reaction to conscription, and the army killed four men. Known as the Conscription Crisis of 1917, the events fuelled cleavages between French and English Canada and provoked widespread distrust of government. 3 In 1940 National Selective Service (NSS) was established. By 1942 NSS controlled the work/economy of all men and most women, deemed which sectors were essential, and placed people in positions. 4 From Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Dependents’ Allowance Board, and cited in Christie (2000:260). 5 Quotations are taken from the records of the Supreme Court of New York State. (Interrogatories to be administered to Sir Robert S.S. Baden-Powell, of London, England, a witness to be examined under the commission to be issued pursuant to order entered herein on 14th day of December, 1917 in connection with the suit in which he as ‘witness, personally appeared before me on the 24th day of May, 1918, at 10:30 o’clock in the afternoon, at the American Consulate General, 18, Cavendish Square, London, West, in the city and county of London, England, and after being sworn to testify the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, did depose to the matters contained in the foregoing deposition, and did, in my presence, subscribe the same and endorse the exhibits annexed hereto.’) 6 Memo from Naval Secretary, July 1959, in LAC, RG24, accession 83-84/167, box 4352, file 9700-11. 7 Ibid.
Notes to pages 74–91 265 8 Ibid. 9 All these reports from recruiting units on the school book covers were found in LAC, RG24, E-1-C, accession 1983-84/49, file 304-20-4, part 9. 10 Air force internal communications in LAC, RG24, box 285, file 304-20-4, part 11. 11 Ibid. 12 LAC, RG24, vol. 17881, file 900-7-5. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Letter to Air Marshal Hugh Campbell, Chief of Air Staff, RCAF, from Kenneth Loheed, President of Kiwanis International, 26 March 1959, LAC, RG24, vol. 17881, file 900-7-6. 16 A copy of the Cadet Training Manual can be found in the Library and Archives Canada ‘Indian Affairs’ collection, RG10, vol. 10245, reel T-7546, file 1/25-10. 17 War Office (1943:5). 18 For an excellent historical account of sport and militarism in the American context, see Wanda Ellen Wakefield. 1997. Playing to Win: Sports and the American Military, 1898–1945. Albany: State University of New York Press. 19 Mackenzie (1943:48–51). 20 LAC, RG24, vol. 3303, file 280-1-6. 21 War Office (1943). 22 Canadian Welfare Council, ‘Training Recreation Leaders.’ Ottawa: 1947. 23 3 July 1959, ‘Supporting Data for Defence Council,’ submitted by Personnel Members Committee, in LAC, RG24, accession 83-84/167, box 4352, file 9700-11. 24 April 1960, ‘Policy Statement for the Division of Responsibility for the Provision and Maintenance of Physical Fitness and Recreation Facilities,’ in LAC, RG24, accession 83-84/167, box 4352, file 9700-11. 25 LAC, RG24, vol. 17881, file 900-10-2. 26 Ibid. 27 For example, see LAC, RG24, Series E-1-C, vol. 17881, file 900-10, which spans the period 1942 to 1947. 28 Ibid. (RCAF: Public Relations, RCAF – Recruiting Campaign – Radio Advertising.) 29 Ibid. 30 Hope Stoddard, ‘No Women Being Hired,’ Canadian Forum, June 1946, cited in Christie (2000:249). 31 LAC, RG24, Series E-1-C, accession 1983-84/049, box 284, file 304-20-4, part 6. 32 Press release issued on demobilization of RCAF Women’s Division in 1946, in LAC, RG24, vol. 3374, file 433-3-1 v/4.
266 Notes to pages 92–126 33 From a radio recruiting script, June 1943, in LAC, RG24, vol. 17881, file 900-10-1. 34 Department of National Defence (RCAF) Airwoman 1957 Summer Spots, #5 (as recorded 5 June 1957), in LAC, RG24, 1983-84/049, box 290, file 304-20-7, part 3; emphasis in original. 35 LAC, RG24, vol. 3374, file 433-3-6 (emphasis mine). 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Outram (1956). 41 LAC, RG24, vol. 17881, file 900-10-1. 42 Ibid.; emphasis mine. 43 LAC, RG24, accession 1983-84/049, box 290, file 304-20-7, part 2. 44 Ibid. 45 Legislation was passed in Ottawa in 1884 creating a system of state-funded, church-administered Indian residential schools. 46 LAC, RG10, vol. 10245, reel T-7546, file 1/25-10. 47 Ibid. 48 LAC, RG24, accession 1983-84/167, box 4351, file 9700-8, vol. 1. 49 LAC, National Defence, RG24, accession 1983-84/049, vol. 1, box 290, file 304-20-8. 50 Memo from Eastern Command, 28 October 1964, in LAC, RG24, vol. 22338, file C-ECC-2730-1, part 11. 51 Ibid. 52 For more on the report, P.C. 1003, the National War Labour Order, see Morton (1998). 53 (Army: Service personnel and recruiting – general, policy), LAC, RG24, vol. 22338, file C-ECC-2730-1, part 11. 54 LAC, RG24, vol. 22338, file C-ECC-2730-1. 4. The Urban, the Educated, and the Recruitment Crisis 1 ‘Stress and Productivity in the Armed Forces: Everything you wanted to say about the navy but nobody asked,’ Surg. LCDR Z.D. Belak, 16 May 1978:6, in Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG24, box 6, file 5762-3-4. 2 As I noted in the last chapter, the women’s divisions of the three services often worked in competition with each other. 3 ‘Officer Personnel’ memo, 26 January 1955, in LAC, RG24, 1983-84/216, file 895PSAB.
Notes to pages 127–72 267 4 Eventually, in the 1990s, research was contracted out to private firms and researchers, while its own budget and capacity were cut back. Located initially in Toronto, the CFPARU was eventually moved to National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, where it was reorganized in the 1990s into the Directorate of Human Resource Research and Evaluation. 5 The Technical Cooperation Program (TTCP) is an international organization that collaborates in defence scientific and technical information exchange; program harmonization and alignment; and shared research activities for Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The president of the United States and the prime minister of the United Kingdom formed TTCP in October 1957, with Canada joining what would become a tripartite organization immediately following its constitution. Australia joined TTCP in 1965 and New Zealand in 1969. 5. Reorienting Recruitment: Towards a ‘Different’ Military? 1 ‘Notes for an Address by the Federal Minister of Labour, the Honourable Gerald A. Regan, to the Association de Sécurité des Industries Forestiers du Québec,’ Chicoutimi, Quebec, 4 September 1981, in Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG24, box 6, file 5762-3-4. 2 Sgt. Huff Mullick, South Asian recruiting coordinator for the Canadian Forces Recruiting Centre in Vancouver, in Mehfil magazine (2003). 3 I was an instructor for two (English) courses in the Department of Politics and Economics at the Royal Military College of Canada, January–May 2003. 4 ‘Stress and Productivity in the Armed Forces: Everything you wanted to say about the navy but nobody asked,’ Surg. LCDR Z.D. Belak, 16 May 1978:12, LAC, RG24, box 6, file 5762-3-4. 5 In 1989 African Americans composed 23 per cent of military personnel, and black men composed a greater proportion of junior enlisted ranks than whites in the army. The figures for black women’s recruitment are even more striking. Between the end of the Vietnam War and the late 1980s, the percentage of African American women in the military increased six times over. U.S. Department of Defense data from 1987 show that African American women between the ages of 18 and 21 are enlisting in much higher numbers than even African American males. While black women make up only 12 per cent of total population, they are 48.7 per cent of women in the army. See Griggers (1997). 6 Since the Civil War, African Americans have participated in the U.S. military. The armed forces have remained an important route to class mobility for people of colour, particularly blacks. Poverty is also more heavily racialized in the United States than Canada, which deeply affects military enlist-
268 Notes to pages 174–91
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ment. The conflict that dominated the Canadian political imaginary historically, and which has most affected militarism and military recruitment, has been the English-French divide. French Canada has opposed most historical instances of Canadian military participation because these initiatives have tended to be supportive of British-led military campaigns. Finally, racialized groups also tend to be much more concentrated in urban areas in Canada. See Cowen (2007a) for more detail on these differences. On anti-racism organizing in the 1980s, see Krishnan (2003). ‘Studio D’ at the National Film Board, originally created to engage in women’s film production, also became an important forum for addressing race and racism in Canada throughout the 1980s in response to feminist anti-racist organizing. On police violence and the racialized judicial system, see Amnesty International (2004) and Holliday (2003). On systematic discrimination in the labour force, see Powless (1985). Fore more on the Oka crisis, see Dickson-Gilmore (2000) and Westra (1999). Memo, 9 April 1980, in LAC, RG24, box 12, file 5762-1-8. Native Peoples Development Program Report FY 81/82, 15 July 1982, in LAC, RG24, box 12, file 5762-1-8. For more on these programs, see Moses, Graves, and Sinclair (2004:75-85). Jefferson also reports that during the 1990s more than 20,000 Muslim women were raped as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia. And as recently as 2003 the UN reported thousands of women and girls had been raped during fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Gang rape was so widespread and brutal that doctors began classifying vaginal destruction as a combat-related crime. From internal document: ‘Increased Recruitment of Women in the CF,’ TQL Project, April 1997, Capt. A. Karmas. Accessed via Access to Information and Privacy request. Ibid. Ibid. Minister’s Advisory Board on Canadian Forces Gender Integration and Employment Equity: Successes and Opportunities, 1999 Annual Report, ch. 3. This also meant that the CF became subject to EE audit requirements, which require that it collect workforce information via a self-identification census, conduct a workforce analysis to compare the representation of designated group members against the Canadian workforce, undertake a review of its employment systems looking for barriers to employment, training, and promotion, and update its employment equity plan. Captain Harjit Sajjan, quoted in Vancouver Sun (2003). See Harris (2002).
Notes to pages 191–201 269 20 By ‘smaller cities’ I am referring to places that have a population between 100,000 and 500,000. 6. The Military after Discipline 1 Tasseron (2001). 2 An important exception to this is the occupation of pilot in the air force, which offers highly marketable skills in commercial flight. This military occupation, small in numbers, has therefore faced its own, rather distinct recruiting and retention challenges, which have more to do with retaining individuals with adequate skill, as opposed to attracting them initially. 3 Founded in 1946 with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations is an ‘action orientated research organisation.’ The institute was in part a continuation of the assembly of psychiatrists, clinical and social psychologists, and anthropologists who worked in the British army during the Second World War. The objectives of the institute were to ‘study human relations in conditions of wellbeing, conflict or breakdown, in the family, the community, the work group and the larger organisation, and to promote the health and effectiveness of individuals and organisations.’ See www.tavinstitute.org. 4 No doubt, major changes in the labour force and economy were taking hold during this time in Canada, the United States, and most other advanced capitalist countries, as I argued in the preceding chapters. The extent to which economic transformations served to rationalize new macro and totalizing theories about the dawn of a new era, and which prioritize the lives and stories of some workers at the expense of others, requires critical interrogation. Jarvis (1998) provides some useful insights when he writes that ‘the postindustrial thesis is also an instrumental cartography, a mapping in which the primary ideological imperative is to erase the critical contours of late capitalism as they are inscribed in class formations and conflicts of crowded cities and factories, in favour of postindustrial locations – such as the office, the university campus, assorted mediascapes and technological playgrounds.’ 5 ‘Notes for an Address by the Federal Minister of Labour, the Honourable Gerald A. Regan, to the Association de Sécurité des Industries Forestiers du Québec,’ Chicoutimi, Quebec, 4 September 1981, in Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG24, box 6, file 5762-3-4. 6 From ‘Reshaping Working Life in the Federal Public Service,’ Public Service Alliance of Canada, circa 1975. All military documents on the problem of QWL from this time are filed in LAC, RG24, box 6, file 5762-3-4, and were opened following an ATIP request in 2004.
270 Notes to pages 201–11 7 ‘Notes for an Address by the Federal Minister of Labour, the Honourable Gerald A. Regan.’ 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 B.C. Federation of Labour (1983). 11 In 1996–7, the Pentagon issued more than a million pieces of equipment to local American police departments. A single military unit – Joint Task Force Six, an anti-narcotics force based in southwest Texas – provides 500 training missions to local law enforcement each year. The task force’s own guidelines in 1993 – the year it trained agents for the Waco raid – stated that ‘legal and policy barriers to the application of military capabilities are gradually being eliminated’ (Scarborough 1999). Police at the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004 used ‘Long Range Acoustic Devices’ against protesters. LRAD – a military technology that emits high-frequency sounds that damage the human eardrum – was ‘originally conceived to support the protection and exclusion zones around U.S. Navy warships’ (http://www.defence-update.com/products/l/LRAD.htm). Finally, activists and scholars are increasingly making links between the violent and dehumanizing treatment of prisoners at home and abroad; for example, connections between the management of U.S. prisons and the events at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. 12 ‘Notes for an Address by the Federal Minister of Labour, the Honourable Gerald A. Regan’; emphasis in original. 13 Ibid. 14 Marx, Capital, vol. 1:308; cited in Foucault (1979:163–4). 15 Cited in Lemke (2003). 16 For a reading of Deleuze’s arguments that emphasizes the shifting political geographies of the society of control, see Walters (2006). 17 ‘Notes for an Address by the Federal Minister of Labour, the Honourable Gerald A. Regan.’ 18 LAC, RG24, box 6, file 5762-3-4. 19 Ibid. 20 ‘Stress and Productivity in the Armed Forces: Everything you wanted to say about the navy but nobody asked,’ Surg. LCDR Z.D. Belak, 16 May 1978, in LAC, RG24, box 6, file 5762-3-4. 21 Letter to NDHQ from Lt-Colonel Rampton, CFPARU 1980, LAC, RG24, box 6, file 5762-3-4. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 CFPARU 1980, LAC, RG24, box 6, file 5762-3-4.
Notes to pages 211–37 271 25 Letter from Lt-Colonel Rampton, Commanding Officer at PARU, to N.D. Porter, Research Director, Union of National Defence Employees, LAC, RG24, box 6, file 5762-3-4. 26 From ‘Depot Operating Instructions – QWL Committees,’ LAC, RG24, box 6, file 5762-3-4. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 See www.city.toronto.on.ca/quality_of_life/. 30 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, ‘Law and Justice Zero Tolerance Policing Report: The Experience of New York City.’ Accessed 10 October 2004. http://www.atsic.gov.au/issues/law_and_justice/ zero_tolerance_policing/report/3ztp.asp. 31 See http://www.healthycities.org/. 32 Ibid. 33 UN Population Program (1994). 34 Formerly the Director Personnel General Services. 35 From ‘What Is Canadian Forces Quality of Life?’ http://www.dnd.ca/qol/ engraph/diagram2_e.asp. 36 See the DQOL website, www.dnd.ca/qol/engraph/links_e.asp (accessed 8 August 2004). 7. The Soldier and the Rise of Workfare: Generalizing an Exceptional Figure? 1 Brink Lindsay, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Against the Dead Hand, runs a weblog. This quote is drawn from a 12 December 2002 posting of his titled ‘World View Archives.’ Accessed 2 January 2005. http://www.brinklindsey.com/archives/003056.php. 2 Unidentified religious leader at Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa, 11 November 2004, Globe and Mail. 3 Here ‘liberal’ refers not to the classic philosophical tradition but to the American conception of ‘liberal’ as progressive. For a helpful discussion on this distinction and its historical emergence, see Smith (2003), ch. 2. 4 For a critical discussion of this explanation of benefits as ‘disincentive for work,’ see Guest (1997:261). 5 On the differences between welfare and workfare policy in Canada and the United States, and the implications of this for policy transfer, see Quaid (2002:32). 6 The CHST is the largest federal transfer program, which the provinces and territories are almost entirely free to spend as they see fit. 7 SUFA encourages collaborative provincial-federal decision making and much greater citizen and community input into social policy.
272 Notes to pages 239–51 8 This statement by Stephen Harper was made while he served as Leader of the Official Opposition in Parliament, to Report News Magazine, 25 March. 9 ‘US aircraft carrying many thousands of troops to Iraq are being allowed to stop in St John’s and Stephenville, Newfoundland for refueling and crew changes. “In recent weeks, as the U.S. has used Newfoundland as a refueling stop for military flights en route to the Middle East, ‘We’ve been getting roughly 2 or 3 U.S. flights a day, with probably 1000 troops coming through each day,’ said Gary Vey, CEO of the Gander Airport Authority”’; Ottawa Citizen, 22 March, quoted in Sanders (2003). 10 As Sanders (2003) writes, ‘Canadian frigates have accompanied US warships through the Persian Gulf right up to Kuwait. From there, these warships are serving as “platforms” from which to launch the air war against Iraq. This is all part of Operation Apollo, which originally began as Canada’s contribution to the war in Afghanistan, but which has now conveniently mutated into a major Canadian contribution to the US War against Iraq.’ 11 See the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website for this quote and other discussions of security and citizenship; www.cic.gc.ca/english/ press/01/0119-pre.html. 12 In her 1994 paper ’68 or Something,’ Lauren Berlant asks, ‘What does it mean to be accused of being ’68 in the 1990s?’ and thus questions the emergence of a parallel politics of progressivism as ‘outdated idealism’ in the United States. 13 Canadian Alliance Defence Policy Paper, ‘The New North Strong and Free,’ 5 May 2003. 14 Stephen Harper, speech to the Colin Brown Memorial Dinner, National Citizens Coalition, 1994. 15 Quote from an article in the Halifax Daily News, 4 April 2003, reproduced at http://www.bcpolitics.ca/left_harperstand.htm. 16 In his 1998 book entitled Who Killed Canadian History? Granatstein attributes responsibility for this supposed ‘death’ to ‘social historians,’ in particular, Marxists and feminists, who he thinks have seized control of university history departments and destroyed the discipline. 17 ‘Address by the Prime Minister to the Graduates of a Basic Infantry Soldier Course at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright,’ 13 April 2006. Text available from the prime minister’s website; http://www.pm.gc.ca/. 18 The Globe and Mail’s Christie Blatchford is likely the most accomplished in this regard. 19 For more on this latter point, see Grover (2003). 20 In the U.S. context, we would have to include another figure here. Patricia Hill Collins (1991) and Jaqui Alexander (2002) point out that poor, black
Notes to pages 251–3 273
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women deemed ‘welfare queens’ have been defined as a national betrayal and unworthy of national care. Meanwhile, U.S. militarism calls on the extreme support of central authority and investment, in the name of citizens’ (and oftentimes women’s) security. And ironically, young black women have become one of the largest and fastest growing groups in the U.S. armed forces. Canadian and U.S. politics are not interchangeable in any way. There is, however, a long history of policy exchange that makes developments in one country, at least potentially, highly relevant to the other. While neoliberal policy has been transferred almost exclusively from south to north, there have been key historical moments when this was reversed. For example, the Pentagon used the Canadian military as a basis for study in the lead-up to the all-volunteer force in 1973; Cotton interview (2004). Prisons in many jurisdictions have started charging prisoners a slidingscale room and board, ranging from $6 to $56 per day (New York Times 2004). In 2003 Congress authorized a significant expansion of TRICARE, the military’s health-care benefit organization. In May 1998 Mike Harris successfully introduced legislation to prevent workfare workers from unionizing in Ontario. This followed similar moves by governments implementing workfare in other jurisdictions. Unions have been some of the most organized and vocal critics of workfare, in many places bringing legal challenges to its generalization. For example, municipal unions in New York City have brought forward (unsuccessful) court cases charging that workfare is being used by the city to replace fulltime unionized workers.
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Index
Aboriginal peoples (see also Native peoples; Oka crisis), 56, 107–8, 155– 6, 160, 177–80, 192, 194–5 Abu Ghraib, 231 Accumulation, 17, 234 Advertising, 121, 195 Afghanistan, 195, 240, 248 Africville, Nova Scotia, 169 Agamben, Giorgio (see also State of exception), 11, 253 Alberta, 46, 143–4, 146, 164, 172, 238, 243–4 Anti-militarism, 59 Anti-racism, 154, 172–3, 268 n7 Anti-Terrorism Plan (Bill C-36), 241 Anti-urbanism in the military, 192 Anti-war movements, 154–6 Anti-war sentiment, 154–6, 248 APEC Summit, 21 Arendt, Hannah, 20, 31–2, 155, 254 Atlantic Charter, 48 Attrition (see also Retention), 122, 140, 189, 198 Australia, 240 Australian Centre for Quality of Life, 216–17
Baby race, 40 Base Borden, 187 Basic training, 138 Belonging, see also Identity, 10 Benefits, 4–6, 22, 121, 171, 218, 228 Bennett New Deal, 42–3 Bentham, Jeremy, 18 Beveridge, William, 19, 50, 53 Beveridge Plan, 5, 50, 53 Bilingualism (see also Politics, and language; Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism), 103 Biological reproduction, 40, 57 Biopolitics (see also Foucault, Michel), 33–4, 83, 127, 225 Bismarck, Otto von, 29, 36 ‘Blanktown,’ 166–7 ‘Blue collar’ (see also Class), 152 Body (see also Biopolitics; Femininity; Masculinity; Sports), 58, 83, 92, 95, 186 Boer War, 35, 39 Bona Fide Occupational Requirement (BFORs), 183 Borders, 31, 168, 231, 241–3
304 Index Border Security Declaration (see also Security and Prosperity Partnership), 241 Bourdieu, Pierre (see also Habitus), 145 Boy Scouts, 73–4 Branding, 249, 259 ‘Brats’ (see also Youth), 225 Breadwinner welfare state, 19, 56–8, 180 Britain. See United Kingdom British Columbia Federation of Labour, 202–3 Brodie, Janine, 28, 165 Brown, Wendy, 242 Buck-Morss, Susan, 13 Bush administration (George W.), 6 Cadets, 82, 107–8, 187, 226 Caledonia, Ontario, 21 Calgary, Alberta, 75 Canada Assistance Plan, 238 Canada Health and Social Transfer, 237–8 Canadian Airborne Regiment (see also Somalia affair), 176 Canadian Alliance party, 244, 246 Canadian Council on Social Development, 62 Canadian Forces (see also Military), budget, 157, 195, 226–7, 247; Canadian Forces Aboriginal Entry Program, 179; Canadian Forces Headquarters, 120; Canadian Forces Personnel Applied Research Unit, 22, 89, 127–87 Canadian Forum, 90 Canadian Geographical Journal, 99, 101, 102, 116 Canadian Home Journal, 64, 68
Canadian Muslim Congress, 249 Canadian Patriotic Fund, 39 Canadian Welfare Council, 48, 62–3, 84, 106, 148–9 Canadian Women’s Army Corps (CWAC) (see also Women, in the military), 92, 98 Canadian Women’s Auxiliary Corps (see also Women, in the military), 95 Capacity, 18 Capitalism, 29–31, 53, 125, 236 Caplan, Elinor, 242 Celucci, Paul, 240 Charity, 38–9, 49 Charter of Rights and Freedoms (see also Entitlement; Social, rights), 23, 160, 183 ‘Chicago School’ economists (see also Friedman, Milton), 235 Childcare, 86, 115, 219, 222 Children (see also ‘Brats’; Youth), 6 Chrétien, Jean, 240 Christie, Nancy, 13, 39 Cities, 14, 148–51, 153–5, 168, 189–93 Citizen Army, 31 Citizenship (see also Borders; Entitlement; Immigration; Politics; Universalism), Canadian, 105, 156–8; and familial politics, 57; geographies of, 7, 153; and language, 103– 4, 161–4; and masculinity, 109; military, 16–19, 159–62, 226, 230, 249, 252, 255; modern, 17; national, 7, 10, 13, 27–8, 152–3, 168; neoliberal, 230–9, 252, 254, 255–60; and race, 106, 168–80, 191; rights, 160, 233, 236, 238; second class, 103; social, 7, 116, 120; and space, 153; status, 104, 152–3; Studies, 10, 55; urban, 190–3; and war, 5, 153; and work (see also
Index 305 Labour, and citizenship), 16–19, 151, 203, 232, 257 Citizenship Act, 107 Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 242 Civilian, 6, 7, 19, 22, 24, 26, 32, 38, 51, 61, 123, 153, 198–9, 231, 250 Civilianization, 204 Civilian welfare, 116, 120–1 Civil-military relations, 12, 16 Civil servants, 49, 70 Civil war, 36, 267 n6 Clarke, S.D., 86 Class, 8, 13, 29, 55, 141, 151–2, 156, 215, 232, 234; conflict, 30, 54; ‘creative,’ 165, 193; working, 30, 39, 46, 57 Clausewitz, Karl von, 11, 12, 19, 20, 31, 129 Clinton, Bill, 238 Cold Lake, Alberta, 155 Cold War, and build-up of military forces, 90, 124; and Canada, 72, 87, 90, 102, 127, 245; and culture, 71–2; and the United States, 70–1, 245 Collective bargaining, 202 Collective subject, 55 Colonialism, 36, 107, 155, 168, 192 Community, 6, 108, 181, 199, 218 Conference of Defence Associations (see also Defence lobby), 247 Congress of Berlin, 36 Conscription, 16, 31, 122, 162, 236, 264n2 Conservative Party (see also Harper, Stephen), 14, 41, 43, 230, 239, 244, 246–8 Consumption, 63 Continental Congress, 36 Continental defence, 70
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), 47 Creative destruction, 204, 234 Cultural politics, 70–1 Culture, 28, 70, 128, 208 Death, 7, 31 Defence Diversity Council, 185 Defence lobby (see also Fraser Institute; Granatstein, Jack), 243, 247 ‘Definition of the family’ initiative, 221 Deleuze, Gilles, 207, 260 ‘De-militarization of welfare,’ 5 Department of Citizenship and Immigration, 107 Department of Indian Affairs, 107 Department of National Defence. See Canadian Forces; Military Dependents’ Allowance Board, 64 Dependents’ policies (see also Canadian Patriotic Fund; Childcare; Family allowance dependents’ policies), 39, 53, 104, 123, 219 Depression, 42, 48–9 Deserving poor, 19, 237, 251–2 Designated Group Members (DGMs), 189 Desire, 128, 132, 139 Difference, 159, 166, 170 Directorate, Quality of Life (DQOL) (see also ‘Quality of Life’), 221–4 Dis-ability, 183 Discipline, 62, 83, 142, 198–229, 258 Dissent, 46 Diversity, 159–97, 242 Division of labour, 206 Domestic deployment of military, 21, 157, 177–80 Domesticity, 63, 69, 95, 116
306 Index Domestic life, 47 Donzelot, Jacques, 29 Drucker School of Management, 217 Duty, 5 Economic conception of military service, 129–31, 138, 165, 259 Economic development (see also Uneven development), 124, 146, 150 Economic rights, 30 Economic subject, 129–31, 140 Economist, 14 Economy, 48, 60, 114, 125, 129–30, 212, 232, 235, 241–2 Education, 6, 131–2, 135–42, 145–6, 149–51 ‘Educational revolution,’ 136 Emergency Powers Act, 72 Employment, 53, 55 Employment Equity (EE), 180, 188–9, 195 Employment Equity Act (Bill C-64), 188 Enloe, Cynthia, 181 Entitlement (see also Social, rights; Universalism), 3, 19, 41, 43–4, 49, 51–3, 230, 237, 251–4 Entrepreneur housing, 109, 114 Entrepreneurialism (see also Neoliberalism), 18, 109, 115, 144, 244 Ethnicity, 168–76 Eugenics, 34 Europe, 31–2 Everyday life, 115 Exceptional figure, 8, 16, 204, 230, 253–4 Ex-Servicemen’s Widows Association, 41 ‘Exteriorization of war,’ 12
Factory discipline (see also Discipline), 206 Familial politics, 13, 47–8, 57, 63–4, 89, 114, 123, 147, 218–29, 239 Family allowance dependents’ policies (see also Canadian Patriotic Fund), 54, 237 Fashion, 95–102 Federal pension plan, 120 Femininity, 92–5, 180, 187 Feminism (see also Gender; Women), 10, 246 First Nations. See Native peoples First World War. See World War I Flexibility, 200, 228–9 Florida, Richard (see also Class, ‘creative’), 165 FLQ crisis (see also October crisis), 21 Force Reduction Plan, 175–6, 185 Fordism, 55 Foucault, Michel (see also Governmentality), 9, 11, 12, 20, 33, 206–7 France, 5, 37 Francophone, 163 Fraser Institute (see also Defence lobby; Think-tanks), 243 ‘Freedom from want,’ 48 French (see also Politics, and language), 103, 161–4 ‘French-thinking people,’ 103 Friedman, Milton, 204, 235–6 Fruit Machine, 87 Gay and lesbian politics, 154 Gender (see also Women), integration, 184; and military recruitment, 88–9, 95–102, 180; and military service, 88–102, 180–8; and violence, 180–1 Geo-economics, 131 Geographical quotas, 258
Index 307 Geographic imaginaries, 12 Geography, 7–15, 20, 22, 60, 125, 128, 142, 150, 170, 172, 191, 193, 234; and military service, 145–9, 164, 166, 187, 189 Geopolitics, 10, 61, 205, 259 German language, 105–6 German unification, 36 GI Bill (U.S.), 5 GI Jane, 186 Giuliani, Rudolph, 215 Global cities, 190 ‘Global community,’ 194 Globalization, 190, 192, 200–1, 204, 214, 233 Globe and Mail, 15 Government, 7, 33, 36 Governmentality, 199, 206–7, 232 Gramsci, Antonio, 14 Granatstein, Jack, 103, 177, 246, 249 Guantanamo Bay, 231 Guest, Dennis, 3, 45, 51 Gustavsen Lake, 21 Habermas, Jürgen, 30, 55, 234, 235 Habitus, 145 Hamilton, Ontario, 46 Hardt, Michael, 12, 254 Harper, Stephen, 3, 239, 244–5, 248–9 Harper’s Bazaar, 99 Harvey, David, 53, 232 Health care, 6, 34, 237 Healthy cities, 216 Heteronormativity, 102, 184 Hierarchy, 198–205, 212 Hillier, General Rick (Canadian Chief of Defence), 15, 21 Hobsbawm, Eric, 31 Homosexual (see also Gay and lesbian politics), 56, 87, 184
Housing (military), 3, 109, 114, 220, 252 Howe, C.D., 72 Humanism, 201–2, 207 Human rights, 32, 175, 183, 184 Huntington, Samuel H., 15, 16, 19, 129, 253 Identity, Canadian, 28, 108, 155, 162, 192, 247; and citizenship, 133, 140, 155; ethnic, 169, 170, 194; French Canadian, 161–4; national, 10, 13, 31, 59, 108, 115, 155, 194, 247, 257; political, 154; and recruitment, 133, 139; soldier, 194; sub-national, 154; and work, 200 Immigration, 14, 106, 149, 168–70, 221, 242–3 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (Bill C-11), 242 Income tax, 49 Indian and Northern Affairs, 107, 178 Individual and collective, 30 Individualism, 139, 144, 201–8, 252 Individualizing power, 33 Individual psychology, 125 Industrialization, 15, 148 Industrial organization, 26 Industrial production, 16, 33 Industrial reserve army, 16, 250–1 Industrial society, 29, 148, 164, 200, 204 Industry wages, 120 ‘Internal’ and ‘external’ security, 205, 231 Internment of Japanese Canadians, 61, 106 Intimacy, 87–8, 128 Iraq (see also ‘War on Terror’) 240–1, 270 Isin, Engin, 153
308 Index Jacobs, Jane, 156 Japan’s Quality of Life Policy cabinet, 216 Johnson, Lyndon, 236 Kandahar, Afghanistan, 21, 248 Keynes, Maynard, 44 Keynesianism, 17, 18, 30, 120, 218, 230, 232, 234, 235–6, 251 ‘Khaki-shaded pink-collar ghetto,’ 91 Kids’ Day, 81–2 King, William Lyon Mackenzie, 3, 43, 48, 69 Kinsman, Gary, 13, 87, 102 Kipling, Rudyard, 82 Kiwanis club (see also Kids’ Day), 81 Knowledge (see also Military, research), 140 Korean War (see also Cold War), 72, 120, 176 Labour (see also Strikes; Trades and Labour Congress), and citizenship, 46–7, 115, 257; geographies of, 141– 58, 189–97, 258; market, 57, 130, 137, 139–53; and military, 253; movement, 41, 45; organizing, 41, 46–7; and political power, 121, 200; and soldiers, 15–18, 115, 253; wartime, 41–2, 255 Labour force, 139, 146–58, 164 Labrador, 155, 191 Land Forces Command, 192 Language, 103–7, 160–4, 268 n6 Levittown, 262 n1 Liberal Party, 43, 47, 241, 247 Lightman, Ernie, 239 Location, 15 Low, A.M., 34 Low-level flying, protests, 155
Maclean’s magazine, 187 Market, 30 Markusen, Ann, 18 Married Quarters, 74 Marsh, Leonard, 4, 50–2 Marshall, T.H., 18, 28–9 Marsh Report, 4, 22, 45, 47, 50–1, 53, 104 Marx, Karl, 206, 250–1 Marx, Leo, 192 Marxism, 10, 246 Masculinity, 83, 90, 95, 103, 180–8, 249–50 Massey Report, 71 Mass war, 32, 45, 53 Maternity benefits, 186 McNamara, Robert, 230 Means-tested, 43 Mehfil, 105 Melman, Seymour, 17 Migration, 149–50, 190 Militarism, 24, 47, 61, 63, 71–2, 76, 79, 154–6, 249–50, 255 Military (see also Canadian Forces; Militarism), bases (see also Housing (military); Recreation), 6, 73, 109, 114, 197; citizenship, 81, 108, 158–9, 252, 255–9; culture, 160; family, 6, 73, 114, 147, 181, 219–28; neoliberal, 255–9; personnel, 157, 195; professional, 16, 85, 127; recruitment, 7, 47, 78, 88–9, 116, 124–58, 164–97; research (see also Canadian Forces; Canadian Forces Personnel Applied Research Unit), 25, 125, 127–58, 171–2, 257; science, 12, 16 Military Child Care Act, 222 Military Family Resource Centre, 222 Military Family Support Program, 219
Index 309 Military-industrial complex, 17 Military Keynesianism, 17, 120 ‘Military socialization infrastructure,’ 148, 225 ‘Military-society relations’ (see also Civil-military relations), 129 Militia Pension Act, 22, 37 Mine Mill and Smelters Workers, 46 Minister of Labour, 201, 206, 207 Minister’s Advisory Board on Gender Integration, 185 Ministry of Indian Affairs, 82 Mobilization, 32, 49, 61 Modernization (in the military), 159 ‘Modern woman,’ 92–4 Mont Pelerin Society, 236 Montreal, Quebec, 46, 75, 157, 190 Morale, 34, 48 Morton, Desmond, 41, 46, 162, 191, 211 Moskos, Charles, 5 Mothers’ allowances, 36, 52 Mothers and the military, 13, 39, 89, 147 ‘M’ score, 121 Mulroney, Brian, 176, 237 Multiculturalism, 29, 107, 192; ‘death of,’ 243 Napoleon Bonaparte, 31 National culture, 70–1 ‘National force,’ 19 National imaginary, 12, 13 Nationalism, 8, 13–14, 61, 115, 246 Nationalization, 9–12 National security. See Security Nation building, 27, 33 Nation state, 3, 13, 27–8, 216–17, 256 Native peoples, 56, 155–6, 160, 177– 80; and military recruitment: ‘Bold
Eagle,’ 179; Canadian Forces Aboriginal Entry Program, 179; Canadian Rangers, 179; Native Peoples Development Northern Program, 178; Northern Native Entry Program, 179; Sergeant Tommy Prince Initiative, 179 Navy (see also Royal Canadian Navy), 222–4 Negri, Antonio (see also Hardt, Michael), 12, 254 Neoconservatism, 243 Neoliberalism, 19, 199, 206–7, 235–6 New Brunswick, 238 New Deal, 42 Newfoundland, 191, 240 ‘New kind of recruit,’ 132 New middle class (see also Class), 156 ‘New normal’ (see also Exceptional figure), 231 ‘New South,’ 18 New York, 215, 270, 273 New York Times, 6 New Zealand, 5 ‘No Child Left Behind’ (U.S. education plan), 6 Norms, 109 North America, 20 North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), 256 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 129, 155, 157, 184, 256 North Bay, Ontario, 75 Northern sovereignty, 21 Nova Scotia, 143, 169 Nursing sisters, 181 O’Connor, James, 17 October crisis (see also Separatism), 154 Ogdensburg meeting, 69
310 Index Oil, 172 Oka crisis, 20, 177–80 Old Age Security Act, 120 Old Age Security pension, 120 Ontario Works, 238 OPEC crisis, 171 Otherness, 108 Ottoman Empire, 31 Overpopulation, 48 Pal, Lesley, 107 Patriotism, 14, 17, 115, 190 P.C. 1003, 46, 121 Peace, 11, 13, 24, 51, 53, 61, 126, 127, 155, 256 Peacekeeping, 21, 156, 176, 193, 204, 249 Pearson, Lester B., 156, 168 Peck, Jamie, 9 Pension Modernization Plan, 229 Pensions, Canada, 37, 228–9; civilian, 38; France, 37; military, 3, 36, 228–9; United States, 36 Permanent Joint Board on Defence, 70 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, 238 Personnel Members Committee, 85 Personnel Selection Branch, 88, 127 Physical education (see also Sports), 82–6 Physical fitness, 82–5, 109 ‘Pin-Up Father,’ 64, 67 Piven, Frances, 7 Planning, 32, 53, 63, 65–6, 69, 85, 114, 126 Points system, 168 Political economy, 10, 60, 120, 128, 204 Politics (see also Biopolitics; Feminism; Geopolitics), Canadian, 14, 150–8; and cities, 150; and language (see
also Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism), 103, 160–4; national, 10, 150, 252; postwar, 27, 52–3, 115–16, 133; radical, 30; of recruitment, 4, 130; and subjectivity, 108, 233; and war, 10–12, 20 Population (see also Biopolitics), 33–4, 48, 59 Ports, 204 Post-war citizenship, 52–3, 58, 61, 116 Post-war culture (see also Cold War), 63 Post-war reconstruction, 53, 63, 69, 115–16 ‘Post-War Woman,’ 68 ‘Post-welfarism,’ ‘Post-Keynesian,’ 199 Precarious employment, 235, 237 Pregnancy, 92, 182, 224 Preparedness, 126 Prisoners, 251 Professionalization (see also Cities), 15–16, 21, 125, 152 Pro-natalism, 40 Propaganda, 88 Public and private space, 88, 141 Public Service Alliance of Canada, 201 ‘Quality of Life,’ 3, 187, 199–229 ‘Quality of Working Life,’ 23, 141, 187, 199–229, 236 Quebec, 75, 103, 150, 162, 177–80, 238, 245 ‘Queer.’ See Gay and lesbian politics Quotas, 162–3 ‘Race,’ 106, 160, 168–80, 247, 267 n5 Racism (see also Oka crisis; Somalia affair), 106–8, 170, 176–80, 191–2, 196, 242
Index 311 Radio propaganda, 89, 94, 195 Rangers, Canadian, 179, 226–7 Rayon Reporter, 99, 100 Razack, Sherene, 176–7 Reagan, Ronald, 158, 237 Recession, 171, 212, 218, 234, 235 Recreation, 85–6 Recruiting (see also Military, recruitment), 7, 47, 78, 88–9, 115–20, 124, 142–58, 159–99, 209–10, 212, 218, 220, 225–6, 228–9 Recruitment crisis, 22, 59, 62, 125–58, 163, 209 Redistribution, 39 Refugees, 253 Regionalism, 14, 143–8, 166, 221, 244, 258–9 Research, see Military, research Reserves, 188, 194, 197 Residential schools (see also Colonialism; Native peoples), 107 Responsibility, 63, 208, 252 Retention, 121, 164, 187, 198–9, 209– 10, 212, 218, 228 Revolutionary War (U.S.), 36 ‘Revolution in military affairs,’ 198 ‘Revolution in social affairs,’ 198 Risk, 30, 233, 241, 252 Roosevelt, Franklin, 3, 43, 69 Rose, Nikolas, 19, 32, 54, 200, 203, 207 Rowell-Sirois Commission, 45 Royal Air Force (U.K.), 6 Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) (see also Canadian Forces; Military), 47, 75, 89, 91, 105, 110–13, 116, 118–19, 126, 127 Royal Canadian Army (see also Canadian Forces; Military), 117, 120–1, 126, 127 Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 87
Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) (see also Canadian Forces; Military), 95, 105, 122, 126, 127 Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (see also Politics, and language), 107, 160–4 Royal Commission on the Status of Women, 160, 182, 185 Royal Military College of Canada, 163, 192 Ruddick, Susan, 55 Rural, 15, 148, 192 Rural geography of recruits (see also Labour, geographies of), 15, 192 Russian Revolution, 31 Salaire vital, 37 Scale (see also Space), 9–10, 27, 34, 43, 49, 115, 214 Schmitt, Carl, 11 School book covers, 74–80 Schools, 74–81, 186 Scouting (see also Boy Scouts), 73–5 Second World War. See World War II Security, 13, 17, 27–8, 30, 59, 63, 71, 190, 205, 232, 239, 241 Security and Prosperity Partnership, 241 Selective service, 61, 264n2 Separatism, 162 September 11 (2001), 242 Sexual assault (see also Gender, and violence), 180–1, 187, 268 n12 Sharma, Nandita, 8–9, 57, 169 Signing bonuses, 195 Six Nations, 21 Skocpol, Theda, 36 Social, citizenship, 7, 20, 26, 29, 43–4, 53; compact, 6; contract, 8; insurance, 3, 4, 29, 45, 54; movements,
312 Index 154, 236; obligation, 7; policy, 34, 44; reproduction, 6, 8, 145, 199; rights, 5, 18, 35, 44; security, 4, 45, 50, 63, 120, 154; wage, 54, 121; workers, 84 Social Assistance Recipient Agreement, 238 Social Union Framework Agreement, 237 Social welfare. See Welfare; Welfare state Society (see also ‘Military-society relations’), 125, 129, 210 Sociology, 125, 127, 128, 145 Soldier (see also Militarism; Military), 8, 15–18, 27, 58, 153, 204–10, 230–54 Somalia affair, 176–8 Sovereignty, 13, 71, 157, 241, 253 Space, 8–10, 12, 20, 63, 69, 116, 131, 145, 256 Sports (see also Masculinity; Recreation), 82–3, 185 Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs (SCONDVA), 220–1, 247 Standing Senate Committee on Security and National Defence (SSCOSND), 241 State, 5, 33, 54 State of exception, 11, 16, 204, 231 Stress, 208–9 Strikes, 37, 46, 121 Struggle, 12, 233 Student movements, 154 Subject, 144 Suburbs, 63–4, 116, 262 n1 Suicide, 40 Targeted welfare, 5 Targeting, 128, 160–1, 164–6, 169, 172, 189, 198, 231, 237
Tavistock Institute, 200, 269 n3 Taylorism, 16, 263 n5 Teamwork, 83–4 Technical Cooperation Program, 129, 267 n6 Technology and warfare, 25, 138 Territory, 26, 28 Terror, 242–3 Thatcher, Margaret, 237 Theatre of war, 204–5 Think-tanks, 234, 243 Third sector, 217 Titmuss, Richard, 34–5, 51 Toronto, 127, 156, 190, 191, 214, 216 Toronto Star, 122, 196 Toronto Welfare Council, 51 Tracking recruits, 134 Trade flows, 241 Trades and Labour Congress, 41 Transport Canada, 241 Tri-service, 126 Trudeau, Pierre Elliott, 156–8, 168 Trudeaumania, 158 Unemployment, 14, 122, 143, 234–5, 250; insurance, 69, 120, 122 Uneven development, 146, 150 Unification of the three services, 127 Uniforms, 95–102 Unions. See Labour United Kingdom, 4, 5, 53, 72, 122, 123, 164, 219, 236–7, 240 United Nations (UN), 70, 190, 216, 240 United States, Department of Defense, 236, 240; imperialism, 70– 1, 240, 259; influence on Canada, 69–70, 131, 155, 236, 238–41, 244–5, 248; military, 6, 81, 85, 122, 131, 164, 172, 181, 217, 219, 222, 240, 252, 272
Index 313 United Steelworkers, 46 Unity, 28, 105 Universalism (see also Targeting), 41, 43–4, 52, 56, 69, 144, 231, 237, 244 Unlimited liability, 17 Urban (see also Cities; Professionalization), 14, 15, 148–50, 204; and rural, 14, 15, 148–50 Urbanization, 20, 21, 125, 148–50, 190–3 Urban/rural divide, 14, 148–51, 168, 190 Vancouver, 156, 190, 191, 195 Veterans, 3, 5, 38, 61, 64, 69, 135, 224, 247 Veterans’ Bill of Rights 3 Veterans Charter, 3 Veteran’s Land Act, 69 Vietnam War, 156 Violence, 155, 177, 180 ‘Visible minorities,’ 197 Volunteer force, 5, 21, 114 Wacquant, Loic, 244 Wages, 120–1, 128, 180 War (see also Cold War), as exceptional, 11; Gulf, 176; mass warfare, 45; and nation, 11, 31, 256; and peace, 230–1; and politics (see also Clausewitz, Karl von), 11, 12, 20, 31, 129, 256; productive dimensions, 25; and space-time, 10–16, 230–1; sub-national, 11; and technology, 137, 204; transnational, 11; United States Revolutionary, 36; weary, 47 ‘War on Terror,’ 3–7, 21, 204, 240–5, 247, 256 ‘Warrior class,’ 226
Wartime production, 35, 46 Welfare (see also Social, citizenship; Welfare state), 236, 250; military, 4, 35, 52, 116, 121, 230; and nationalism, 8, 27, 116, 214, 217 Welfare history, 38 Welfare professionals, 41 Welfare state, 8, 27, 116, 120, 214, 217, 234, 250; dismantling, 4, 5, 18, 23, 230–9 ‘Western civilization,’ 38 Whitaker, Reg, 86, 245 Whiteness, 55, 57, 105, 107, 168–9 Witch-hunt, 86 Wives, 123, 147, 181 ‘Womanpower,’ 92 Women (see also Feminism; Gender), 39–40, 56, 87–90, 160–1, 180–8, 226; in the military, 56, 90–2, 181–8; and military welfare (see also ExServicemen’s Widows Association), 39, 41; and recruitment and retention, 88–90, 123, 180; and workercitizenship, 56 Women’s Division (see also Women, in the military), 90–1 Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens), 95 Work culture, 140, 144, 152, 189, 198– 204, 210 Worker autonomy, 206 Worker-citizen, 15–18, 22–3, 54–5, 61, 92, 102, 115, 151, 153–4, 180, 252 Workers, 54–5, 61, 92, 102, 140, 144, 199–204, 234 Workfare, 22–4, 230, 237, 238–9; military, 62, 250–9 Working Group on Gender Equality, 184 Work-Life Balance, 199
314 Index Workplace culture, 23 Workplace management, 198–229 Workplace reform, 23, 198–213, 217– 29 World Trade Organization, 244 World War I, 31–2, 38–41 World War II, 3–7, 32, 45, 50–1, 73, 92, 106, 124–5, 131, 148, 181, 247 World War III, 126
Youth (see also ‘Brats’), 73–4, 83–4, 87, 146, 150, 155, 170, 225–7, 248; on military bases, 73; and military socialization, 76–84, 225–7; and paramilitary training, 225–7; scouts, 73–4 ‘Yuppie internationale,’ 190 Yuval-Davis, Nira, 13 Zero tolerance, 215
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