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Military Loyalty as a Moral Emotion

journal contribution
posted on 2023-02-09, 22:50 authored by James Connor, Dia Jade Andrews, Kyja Noack-Lundberg, Ben Wadham
Loyalty between soldiers is idealized as an emotion that promotes cohesion and combat effectiveness. However, little empirical work has examined how military personnel understand, feel, and enact loyalty. We use a symbolic interactionalist informed frame to explore the lived experience of 24 retired Australian Defence Force members via in-depth semi-structured interviews. Our analysis revealed three core themes: (1) Loyalty as reciprocity, where there was an expectation that loyalty would be returned no matter what. (2) The importance of emotional connection for cohesion. (3) Loyalty as a prioritizing process, where a soldier’s loyalties gave them a way of choosing between competing demands. Loyalty is a moral emotion that enabled sensemaking. Close interpersonal loyalties tended to trump wider/diffused loyalties. Respondents understood their loyalties to fellow soldiers within wider social constructs of mateship and professionalism. The findings show the risks that come from a reliance on loyalty for combat cohesion.

History

Journal

Armed Forces & Society

Volume

47

Pagination

530-550

Location

London, Eng.

ISSN

0095-327X

eISSN

1556-0848

Language

en

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Issue

3

Publisher

SAGE Publications

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