Card Games and an Israeli Army Unit: An Interpretive Case Study

Abstract

This essay includes a description and an analysis of the gambling encounters that took place in an Israeli reserve company during the early 1980s. The aims of this analysis are: (1) to consider army life in light of some current social scientific thinking about symbolic action; (2) to explore the implications of expressive behavior for an understanding of the armed forces; and (3) to show the importance of examining the place and functioning of less motivated soldiers within the Israel Defense Forces. Through a series of different yet complementary interpretations, the card games are analyzed as complex occasions that accomplish a number of things: entertainment and the revitalization of soldiers, cathartic mechanisms for stress release, rites of inversion for expressing tensions, means for establishing status, and commentaries on the social life of the military unit.

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