Ep 1 (part 2): Experiences of Living and Learning in the Irish Defence Forces: Where you think people are utterly dominated and weak, there's still agency
2:03PM May 8, +0000
Speakers:
Shelli Ann Garland
Andrew Gibson
Keywords:
people
defence forces
officers
hidden curriculum
irish
official transcript
transcript
study
scott
book
hidden
talking
university
terms
education
civilian
army
ways
research
experience
This is part two of a two part series.
Hello, and welcome to a dash of salt. I'm Dr. Shelli Ann. And I'm so glad you're here. Whether you stumbled upon this podcast by accident, or you're here because the subject drew you in welcome. Salt is an acronym for society and learning today. This podcast was created as an outlet for inviting fresh discussions on sociology and learning theories that impact your world. Each episode includes a wide range of themes that focus on society and everyday learning, whether formal or informal. So let's get stuck in shall we.
Today, we are continuing our discussion with Dr. Andrew Gibson, on the lived experiences of Irish Defence Forces officers in civilian higher education since the 1960s.
So you a couple things that you've said brought up a couple of questions for me. earlier on, you said that they go into university and they're studying their courses. And you mentioned a few of them, you know, what the types of courses that they would have studied, which had me thinking, firstly, they don't all have like a certain list or set of courses that they must study. They can study whatever they want. Is that what I'm hearing?
Pretty much? Yeah, I mean, that's how it started in the on some of the earlier interviews were interesting for this, because the earlier years, they weren't really sure what this was, they weren't pretty sure the army authorities weren't really sure what they were going to do with this. And one interview was I was talking to the interviewee he was talking about his initial experiences, and he was brought into the, the army psychologists. So it was a colonel brought in to have a conversation and said, rice, what do you want to go down to do and go away? What do you want to do? And he said, Well, sir, I want to do something that's useful for the army. And this Colonel who had his psychology hat on, I suppose that said, What are you good at? And he said, Well, I'm good at languages. And I really enjoy history. And he said, Well, why did you write down this other topic entirely? He said, what I thought the army would want me to do. And he said, No, you're good at languages do that. That's what you should focus on. The purpose of you going down to do this is to get an education, and whatever that is. So what he was like great, wonderful, he went to the new he studied languages, and studying languages continue to be a part of his ongoing education. Throughout his career, he now works in the charity sector in international aid. And, and his language is that he's studied over this period, you know, we're a big boon to him. The the way it is kind of now today, it's kind of just set out that you can study pretty much anything that isn't a professional degrees, so you're not going to be doing Veterinary Science, you're not going to be doing medicine, you're not going to be doing dentistry, but people who want to study science, if they want to study engineering, if you want to study computers, if they want to study arts, social sciences, I had one person who had studied sociology, and I had other people who had spoken to who did things like ancient civilization, someone who did history, as I said before, people who did business. So there's a range of the kind of study of topics that people can study, it was only in a few cases, really where the Defence Forces identified specific needs that they had. So one was Hotel Management. So this is identified as a need within the Defence Forces. The person I was talking to was saying, you know, if you can think of it in society, we have it in the army. So the view was the in the defence was they do an awful lot of catering. So is there any way to formalise that so that was you know, that person was meeting a specific Defence Forces need, but most people in the army are doing whatever it is that they're doing. The difference would be the naval service, the naval service had a specific course that they used to do with the Royal Navy. Then they set up a naval Science degree in Galway for a few years. And now they actually have down in Hovland and Cork, a college, a Naval College, which is people who are civilians and naval personnel study there and they get a specific naval degree relevant to their training. But here again, another difference Creek creeps in because if you're going to be a naval officer, you do that degree but you also need your other qualification that allows you to, as they say, drive the boat. So they have to do other qualifications you know, on top But within the army, kind of a, it's a it's a broad range of things that are that are relatively okay to do
so are all service members of the IDF offered an opportunity to attend institutes of higher education.
So no, this is it's a compulsory, basically, for officers to have a degree. So either you enter with a degree or you get one while you're in the Defence Forces, after you've done your cadet training, if you are enlisted personnel, it's not part of the training. It's not part of the formation. Now there is more scope, and there's more courses being run. So if someone is working in one of the one of the cores, so if someone is in the Cavalry Corps, let's say they're starting to bring in specific courses that are relevant to what is required in the Cavalry Corps, if someone is in ordnance ordinance, they have specific courses, then that are run there. But on the whole, if you enter into the Irish military, you're trained, first of all, as infantry, you are to be a basic soldier. That's the training you get on that everyone gets the vast majority of enlisted personnel that are still going to be soldiers. So they are not getting that same opportunity that others are. So you know, that is something that that has come up in some of the conversations that I was having that it's something that can be looked at, and should be looked at in due course. But that's the way it stands at the moment.
In the background here. I'm thinking to myself, I'm just dying to hear more about infrapolitics. So I like you to tell us a little bit more about the general concept. Because I would it would not be a concept that again, I'm familiar with.
So infrapolitics is a concept developed by James C. Scott across a lot of his books starting out in his, you know, original anthropological work, and the books like domination of the arts and resistance, the one way you can capture what infrapolitics is infrapolitics is to politics, what infrared is to visible light. What James Scott is interested in is the fact that politics and power exists throughout society. So politics and power is not just what is exercised by those who are in control by elites. The point that he came to, from his, from his work, in different communities in different societies, specifically with peasant societies was these weren't overly powerless people when he was in a rural village. In Malaysia, these people had a form of agency that had forms of power that they did exercise within the village. And that was situated within a much larger context, obviously. Now, the challenge is for us when we're looking at things is not to take what we see in policies and legislation. And perhaps on the news in terms of big events going on between senior politicians, the challenge for us is not to accept that as the as the whole story. And that is what James Scott's work, kind of sensitised me towards. And that's why I found them useful.
Andrew, there's a sociological term that I'm sure that you're familiar with in education that many are familiar with called the hidden curriculum. But the term hidden transcript that you've talked about, is a little bit less of a familiar term. And hidden curriculum refers to that unwritten, unofficial, and often unintended lessons, values and perspectives that students learn in school, and the academic, social and behavioural expectations that are established by schools, and educators to communicate messages to students, like making sure that you stand in a straight line in the hall, making sure that you are in your classroom and in your seat When the bell rings, these types of things would be, you know, in education, that idea of the hidden curriculum. Um, so can you talk a little bit about what hidden transcript is, and perhaps give us some examples?
Okay. And it's, it's great that you, you're forcing me to think about, you know, the parallels between these these different things. How I would draw the distinction would be the hidden curriculum, as you're saying, you know, it's something that is in some senses closer to ideology. You know, the hidden curriculum, in some ways is what we don't know that we know. And borrowings from Slava Dziedzic when I say that, and so the hidden curriculum is what emerges from what we're doing continually. So if you're in a classroom, like in Paul Willis's book, learning to labour, they're being taught by the students are being taught, let's say by middle class teachers, and they're being given middle class values and they're imbibing the aspects of a middle class world that perhaps you know, they will not be able to partake in, in in the future. So that's the hidden question. It's kind of it's what is under the surface there, hidden transcript is more along the lines of what people actively hide. So people use their agency to hide what they're doing to hide what it is that they're trying to do. And here, you have to relate to a few other concepts, right? So I'm going to kind of step back for a second. And when we're talking about a head, a hidden transcript, that implies the notion of a transcript that isn't hidden. Right. And that's what James Scott calls the official transcript. So the official transcript is exactly what you think it is. It's stuff that's written in policies, it's this is the requirements set out in the Defence Forces regulations. It's in a code of conduct for a university. That's the official transcript. That's what the organisation or the institution says it is. Goffman has this wonderful phrase, he calls it a veneer of consensus. And it's a similar ideas like this is what we all agree on that. So this is what we do, because we've written it down. That's the official transcript. The hidden transcript is that form of expression where people are resisting that they're pushing against that official view of things, that view of things, that people in power effectively want us all to accept as universal and true and given an agreed upon. So that's what the hidden transcript is people finding a way to resist people to finding a way to push back. So the you've got the hidden transcripts and the official transcripts. And they're kind of always intention, because what James Scott is saying is the official transcripts always wants to make activities in some way legible. So whatever people are doing whatever their activities are, the stage wants to make it legible. So this is where statistics come from. This is the foundation of tax collecting and the Domesday Book, you know, this is exactly what states try to do. They try to make human activities legible in some ways. Institutions try to do this as well. They want to know exactly how you're using your time, you know, you said you're going to do 50% of your time teaching, and 50% of your time would be research. And I want I want to see a breakdown of that, please, I want to know exactly what you're doing. It's a form of exercise and power. Now, I would I kind of like putting Scott in contrast with a few other thinkers just as a way of showing the difference. You can think of Scott as doing something very different to Foucault. So Foucault talks about the power of institutions and that they're, in some ways, all powerful, the panopticon that state sees everything. And we're all rendered in some way without power. That's a very crude reading of Foucault, I'm aware of that. And Gramsci, she has a similar notion of hegemony, which is related to ideology as well. But this notion that the powers that be set the terms in which we can understand our world, and hegemony, when he renders the rest of us in some way powerless
and you do have notions of countering hegemony, but you know, there's, there's real difficulties with what Foucault and Gramsci are saying there, which is, you know, how powerful this stage is, and the powers that be are Scott saying, actually, no, if you look at what people do, if you step outside the archives, Foucault look at what people do. And from what people actually do, you will see what's going on. So how Scott came to that was, he was looking at taxation policy in rural Malaysia. And you know, how they're going to be collecting rice and how much rice was to go to the city to go to the Central Powers. And he was able in the village to look at what was going on and say, Wow, actually, the numbers don't match up with what's actually going on in the village. And so that's where he was coming from, how would you apply in for politics to 20th 21st century Irish universities? That's the challenge. One way I found was useful was looking at what are the Defence Forces regulations? I was in the military archives, looking at what were the letters being sent back and forth within the defence forces in the 1960s, talking about higher education, what did they want university to be for their officers, when they were having these kinds of conversations, they were setting a official transcript of what university for the officer will be on that that's what they will do. And they will conform with that. And that's how things are going to be we all understand this. Let's move on official transcript stamp literally gone into a file. Find a way when you talk to authors, and you talk to them about their experiences, you start hearing all of the ways they push back against this because they see, in many ways, the ridiculousness of the official transcript, because the people who are coming up with these ideas and policies have not lived that experience. So people were saying, it does not make sense for me to wear a uniform going into my lectures. It's It's weird. I'm not able to integrate into life. That does not work. other instances of this were people talking about not even wanting necessarily to live in the housing that they were obliged to live in, they were saying, I can't study in that setting. So what I'll do is, I'll say I'm there, or maybe I come in early in the morning before someone before, you know, the sergeant arrives, and then I will sign out, and pretend I'm living there. Other stuff, like some someone was saying, not themselves, but they were saying they had heard stories of, you know, officers sneaking out in the morning, climbing out windows, you know, or leaving in the uniform and changing into civilian clothes in the car. You know, it's all of these different ways that people found to push back what they, what they viewed as kind of overweening, it was it was an attempt to have too much power, by the the military establishment that was preventing them from actually integrating and living their lives. But, you know, in doing that, and doing these interviews came across that this is not an unusual thing. This is, this is how people make sense of the world maintains an agency. In a situation where most of their life seems quite regulated, they find a way to sidestep the regulations.
So obviously, you've made the point that sort of this this experience that they had, they have going out into the university, the civilian universities have affected these military officers in their ways of thinking, which obviously, higher level thinking is, you know, what higher education is all about? And, and and then you were talking about the pushback, but I guess my question is, did you see or hear from your conversations with your, with your participants? Where, these experiences that they've had in in university, have affected their military careers?
That's a really interesting point. And this is where the life course perspective, you can see really becomes interesting. So I just stepped back and kind of for just a little methodological point, because I think one of the things I was tempted to do originally in the research is to talk to people who were in University at that time, and that was it, and maybe talk to people who had who were a few years, I was of university. And that would be it. You know, people are in university a few years as I'm talking about their experiences. What happened was, I was asking people interviews interviewees about, you know, what their views were of the relevance of higher education was up for what was it going to do? What bearing, as you're saying to have on their military career. And the first way I started asking about that was, you know, what they studied? So someone is saying, well, I studied Irish history through the medium of Irish. You know, how does that have a bearing on your military career? Not particularly, I was interested in us spoke Irish, it was nice to be able to do that. And and, you know, I did something I was interested in, you know, okay, fine, not not super relevant to what you're saying. And some other people who had entered the defence forces with degrees previously, were saying my degree wasn't even used. They didn't ask me what I had done. One person who had entered the Defence Forces when they started accepting people who had degrees, and what his training NCO was saying, I heard you have a BA, a bad attitude. That was the view, you know, you've come in with a degree, you're not special. You know, so don't don't think this is going to help you in any way. What emerged from interviewing people who were kind of 10 15 20 years down the road and their careers, they were the ones who were saying, I never saw any real relevance in what I was doing, until I became a mid career officer. And that's when they started being in positions
where they're interacting either with, you know, senior Garda officers, or they're interacting with Department of Defence personnel, or other representatives of the our state. The other big thing that comes across is in peacekeeping and their peacekeeping activities abroad, that Irish officers disproportionately end up in headquarters roles they always have. One of the reasons for this has always been that we're an English speaking country. So that's a big benefit, English being the lingua franca of most, you know, militaries around the world. But the other part of it is, you know, that higher education aspect does help. And, and so there was officers who were talking to me there were saying, you know, I didn't really get the benefit of it. Until I went on, I was on placement in Brussels, and then a clicked that I could keep up until though they were kind of being tested in those situations where it was necessary for them to exercise those as you're saying. critical thing. Thinking, that rolls for them to be able to churn out a few papers quite quickly and to distil a large, large amount of information and put it into some intelligible form. That didn't really come across until down the line. But was it helping them in their day to day soldiering role? not hugely. Some of them are saying or I would say the majority, were saying it wasn't helping them to be an infantry officer, it was not helping them to be a CO of a unit. But Did it hurt? No, they're saying No, it didn't. But later on the career tapped, and then certainly in retirement, even if they didn't do something with that degree, enrich their lives. And this is one thing I didn't actually say in the thesis. And it's something that I suppose I was kind of blinded to by that I didn't think of it. But there's a real argument in here from the conversations I've had with these officers, in the wider view of what on education is for these are people who have a very clear view of what their requirements are, what their responsibilities are. What they're thinking about is in terms of how did they protect the lives of the men and women, their commanding, that is their responsibility when they're abroad. Maybe they're when they're working on Island, as they say, they're also looking after people's safety. So they have a very clear sense of, you know, pluck the the, the, the two columns are the kind of debt and credit are, you know, but they're not thinking in economic terms. So there are real interesting kind of counter instance, to that wide ranging view of education in some ways for employability, and it's for the economy. And it's for somehow to augment your career and make you whatever it is more powerful, or more wealthy, or whatever. A lot of them were talking about. As this enriched my life, this made me a better person, this made me be able to talk to more people in the world that I met, one of the officers we interviewed, was talking about, he was in a village in Lebanon. And as Irish officers would be going around different villages, you know, meeting the village head man, and just seeing how things are conditions on the ground and ended up talking to this chap who was if not the leader of certainly senior in the Lebanese Communist Party. And he didn't speak, this Irish officer didn't speak any Arabic. And this officer, this, this Lebanese politician in this village didn't speak any English. But they both spoke Russian. And he was saying, you know, from studying languages in college, he had that, and he was able to, you know, have that exchange with that person. And some of the officers from other countries that he was with in this un battalion were kind of surprised by this, he was this Irish guy speaking Russian to this, Lebanese communist, we didn't know about that. So this is, this is just what I'm saying, you know, there's a wide range of use of hos education can be for, you know, and the final point, I would just say, just on that is, a reasonable number of them also did point out in the men in the early years, who were studying there, that they met their wives and Galway. So that's another thing as well, that's kind of, you know, it's, it's funny, in some ways that that's the thing, but there were saying that that would have been an experience that might not have been as easy for them, had they not been exposed to more civilians, you know, if they were living on the base, as young men, what would have been their opportunities to meet future partners, you know,
yeah, and so it does sound like that, you know, these, this possibility of them being able to go to, you know, universities, really did have an impact on their integration into civil society, their understanding of other cultures globally, and other societies, and, you know, really an impact on their, even their own civilian lives, you know, and, and, and their futures, you know, meeting their wives and that kind of thing. So, obviously, the impacts have been huge. And your we could talk about this all day long. I'm just fascinated by it. But we are getting to the close of the podcast. And so one of the things, there's a couple more questions I do want to ask you, and one of them is that, obviously I know that your PhD thesis is available on open access at Trinity, and the Tara online depository for anyone that's interested in reading your work further about your work. But my question for you is do you have any reading recommendations for anyone who might be interested in finding out more about infor politics or hidden transcripts, or learning and socialisation for members of the Irish defence forces? I know you're the perfect person to ask this. And so here's your opportunity to share with our listeners and let them know what how they can do some further reading.
So the issue with infrapolitics is James Scott has an off kind of doing a little quick process of his ideas. So maybe, you know, maybe that's something I can do in the future. And what I would say is some of his, the books that are, you know, reasonably reasonable size, are worth reading in their own right. So one of them is domination, the arts of resistance, it is brilliant, it is absolutely brilliant, because it takes you through that macro, that micro experience of what it is speaking to individuals looking at the context of a small setting, and then extrapolating from that, to what that can tell us about society. And basically, any book by James C. Scott, I would recommend, and but if you don't have if resources are scarce at the moment, and there's lots of interviews with him online as well. And there's transcripts of interviews that were done with him, which are online. I'm working on some publications as well, you know, related to some of this trying to bring the notion of infrapolitics to a wider audience. But there's, there's also plenty of articles out there by people who've applied infrapolitics, to lots of different settings. Really, really, really interesting work. That's quite well done. And, but what I would say is, Scott's kind of view of the world sets in sits in a family of a few other views of the worlds that exist, so Arlie Rush Hochschild, you know, on emotion work, and on emotional labour, the managed heart is, you know, a wonderful instance of this where she was looking at debt collectors, and air stewards and air stewardesses. And looking at their lived experience of what it is to work in a setting where they were in a kind of an unequal setting of power, and how they manage that. So, Hochschild is doing kind of something similar there as well, by taking that approach, other people as well, obviously, Goffman is definitely worth reading in this and, and we Berger and Lookmann. Like, a lot of these people are coming at things in similar ways. Speaking in, you know, they're rhyming together in some ways, and I think exactly the same thing. And, but what I would say they would all have in common is this sense that where you think people are overly dominated and weak, there's still agency there. And I think that's a very, very powerful message that definitely needs to be focused on.
Yeah, and that's absolutely a fantastic way to end. So now that your PhD is actually over, done and dusted on, you know, what, and you've had time to kind of think about your wider programme of research, tell us what you're working on now, and what your plans are for the future,
taking a bit of a gap, and a bit of a break from your research, you know, allows you to see some of the threads of what you're actually interested in. And that's what I've started to realise is what I'm interested in is that tension between what Scott calls and official transcript, and then what's the lived experience of the people that impinges upon, and the hidden transcript that they themselves create and write. So I'm finishing up, you know, a couple of publications on this, I'm going to start working on a book proposal, because I have a lot of material that did not have a bearing on the research questions for this, then that can go into a book that's looking at the wider experience of what the the Irish officer is, and has been. So that will, that's a longer term projects that I'm slowly slowly working on. But something that's a bit of a departure from that area is I'm looking at, as you were saying in the introduction, queer, LGBTQ plus experiences, identities, expressions, and how that relates to Irish sex education policy. So that's something that's very important to me, I'm very interested in and longer term projects as well. funding would be nice to get for that, to be able to focus on it, it would also be really great to be able to get into the archives, which unfortunately, I'm not able to. And so at the moment, what I'm doing for that is, is, you know, whatever I'm able to find online that has been published in terms of specific policies in terms of guidelines, looking at that kind of thing. And then one final thing that I'm working on is a edited book project, which is looking at the affective of researcher, so looking at what it is to be a researcher and to integrate biography, affect, emotion, lived experience, into the research experience, and how you do that as something that is integrated as a central part of what you do. So not looking at these things in terms of the mind bloody body, split of Something that needs to be risk managed, that you leave it in just a little subsection of the thesis called reflexivity. Or, you know, positionality, I'm trying to look at how do we integrate that across everything we do. And that came from my own experiences of, you know, doing something I wasn't enjoying, how does that affect your research? So that's another project I'm working on.
Yeah, it's such a unique perspective that you have there from that, that experience of sort of, you know, reversing gears in the middle of where so many people often in their research will just continue, oh, I've only got two more years, I'm just going to get through this, again, the other idea of drudgery and, you know, realising that you sort of got into something that you didn't really have a passion for, and what a difference, you know, it was for you, when, when you actually said, you know, what I can, I can actually save this what I've done for the past two years, and I can actually continue on from it. And like I said, My knowing you and seeing what, how you just blossomed in your, in your research, and you were so excited for these conversations, and where you were going in your research, and, and you were able to kind of snowball those last two years. So quickly, you know, it just gaining that momentum and that excitement as you went into the end, the end game there, and somebody who has that same passion and background and experience with the military, you know, again, from the American perspective, but still, there's so much that you've said that, you know, I could identify with through my own family members, as well as myself. So I know there's a lot of people listening that would completely be fascinated by this as well. So, Dr. Gibson, thank you so much for joining me today on a dash of salt. It's really truly been a fascinating conversation, and a glimpse into the how the officers and the Irish Defence Forces interact with civilian higher education, and how their learning experiences influenced their socialisation, their professional formation and the implications that higher education has played in their military role. I look forward to talking to you again in the future, especially when that book is written. I'll definitely want to have you back on and have some conversation again. And thank you so much for spending the time with us.
Dr Garland, thank you very much. Surely that's the most outspoken about my PhD since my viba. And that was far more enjoyable. So thank you.
Good. I'm glad that you enjoyed it. Thanks so much.
I hope that you've enjoyed this discussion on a dash of salt, a space where you'll always find fresh and current discussions on society and learning today. Season with just the right touch of experts in education and a dash of sociological imagination. Please be sure to like and share this episode. And don't forget to subscribe to a dash of salt on pod bean so that you don't miss the next episode. Thanks so much and we'll chat again soon.