This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Lomsky-Feder, E. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

THE MEANING OF WAR THROUGH VETERANS' EYES: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF LIFE STORIES

This paper deals with the meaning of war as it is articulated in war veterans' life stories and with the interpretive-phenomenological mechanisms through which the war experience is integrated into the course of their lives.

The research is based on 63 life stories of Jewish Israeli men (all names are pseudonyms) who fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War as part of their regular military service, in a variety of roles; half of them held combat positions and half were support staff. The stories were chosen from a clearly defined social group: middle-class, educated and secular men. The analysis of their life stories was derived from a phenomenological conceptual framework. The claim of this paper is that just as war is institutionalised and normalised into the Israeli macrosocial order, so too the individual integrates and co-opts it into his personal biography. Israeli soldiers do not represent the experience of war as a traumatic experience but rather as a `normalised experience' in their lives, contrary to the findings reported in the general literature about war veterans. The life stories reveal two interpretive-phenomenological mechanisms used by interviewees in normalising the war experience: the contiguous (the experience is integrated in the course of life by means of previous social knowledge) interpretation of war and the dual interpretation (the war is simultaneously part of and outside life) of war.

International Sociology, Vol. 10, No. 4, 463-482 (1995)
DOI: 10.1177/026858095010004007


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				Y. Dar and S. Kimhi Youth in the Military: Gendered Experiences in the Conscript Service in the Israeli Army Armed Forces & Society, April 1, 2004; 30(3): 433 - 459. [Abstract] [PDF]