Military Sociology

The Sociology of Military Knowledge

in the IDF
From ‘Forging’ to ‘Deciphering’
Zeev Lerer and Sarit Amram-Katz

Abstract: This article discusses the links between military knowledge

production and the cultural representations of war based on the Israeli
experience during the past two decades. It argues that the locus of
military knowledge production has moved from what can be described
as ‘forging knowledge’ to ‘deciphering knowledge’. This transition is
linked to a crisis in the classic representation of war, which is based
on the congruence between three binary signifiers: enemy, arena, and
violence. The article asserts that the blurring of these three signifiers has
created a Bourdieuian field of military knowledge production in which
symbolic capital is obtained from the production of knowledge that
deciphers the new uncertainty. The article follows the relations between
the binaries and the types of knowledge that have been imported and
translated in the IDF with regard to four major operational settings: the
Oslo redeployment, the Second Intifada, the disengagement from Gaza,
and the aftermath of the Second Lebanon War.

Keywords: binary signifiers, Bourdieuian field, IDF, military knowl-

edge, representation of war, sociology

Introduction

In the last two decades, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been deployed
in a series of very diverse operational settings and circumstances: the First
Intifada in the early 1990s; the Oslo redeployment in the mid-1990s; the
south Lebanon occupation and pullback in the late 1990s; the Second Inti-
fada of the early 2000s; the disengagement operation from Gaza in 2005;
the Second Lebanon War in 2006; and the Gaza operation of 2008–2009. As

Israel Studies Review, Volume 26, Issue 2, Winter 2011: 54–72 © Association for Israel Studies
doi: 10.3167/isr.2011.260204
 The Sociology of Military Knowledge in the IDF | 55

social science researchers working within the IDF, and from a participant-
observer point of view, we could discern a comparable diversity and fluid-
ity in the field of military knowledge production. The disciplines, theories,
and concepts that were imported into the military field and translated by
different agents and institutions multiplied and diversified, dominating
the field, while other knowledge structures were rejected.
In the present article we try to make sense of this, using a sociology of
knowledge lens to look at the military turbulence of the last two decades.
We do so by suggesting and following a link between the cultural rep-
resentation of war and the structures and paradigms of knowledge that
have been imported and translated into the military field. By ‘cultural
representation of war’, we mean the ways in which the concepts ‘war’,
‘battle’, and ‘battlefield’ are commonly constructed and imagined. In this
we generally follow Philip Smith’s (2005) analysis of the cultural logic of
war and how cultural frames and narratives give meaning to both war
and anti-war imperatives. Specifically, Smith identified a limited set of
binary codes and narrative genres that are constructed and mobilized
by actors in order to reinforce or undermine war imperatives. Extending
these ideas to the field of military knowledge, we follow transitions in
the representation of war using three main binary signifiers in different
operational settings and link these changing constellations of signifiers to
the shifts in knowledge production.
The link between how war is represented and signified in different cir-
cumstances and the sort of knowledge that is translated into the military
field lies in the conceptualization of military knowledge as a ‘Bourdieuian’
field (Bourdieu [1984] 1993), defined as a social arena of struggle over the
appropriation of specific types of ‘capital’. Different groups of actors and
institutions are viewed as competing for influence and dominance within
the field. Capital is gained by the production of knowledge that is valued
as efficient and critical to military needs. In Israel, the military field is
wide and very active, structured around collaboration among strong inter-
nal behavioral science units, military academies, doctrinal bodies, a wide
array of security research institutions, and academics from various social
science disciplines.
Looking at this Bourdieuian field and its links with the cultural repre-
sentation of war, it is suggested that different representations allow for
different types of capital. More specifically, we would like to point out a
shift in the last two decades from capital gained by what can be termed
as ‘order-forging knowledge’ to capital gained from ‘order-deciphering
knowledge’. We suggest that these changes in capital structures are linked
to a crisis in the classic representation of war and to the constant blurring
and reshuffling of its main binary signifiers:, enemy, arena, and violence.
56 | Zeev Lerer and Sarit Amram-Katz

In the following sections, we shall first describe the classic representa-

tion of war and the crisis in its representation in the last decades. Then
we shall return to the Bourdieuian field of knowledge production and
describe the sort of knowledge, agents, and practices—as well as the capi-
tal they gain—within the different systems of representation. Finally, and
principally, we shall put these concepts to work by attempting to follow
the ebbs and flows of knowledge in the various operational circumstances
of the IDF over the last two decades.

The Classic Representation of War

The core image of the old and familiar classic representation of war is
that of a catastrophic clash between two sides, each of which attempts
to demolish the other. This classic representation of war can be histor-
ically traced to the emergence of the modern nation-state and its vast
citizen-soldier military (Tilly 1985), the Industrial Revolution, the rise of
rationalization and bureaucratization (Weber 1978), and the industrialized
battlefields of the modern era. The basic representation of the modern
battlefield is the imagery of Carl von Clausewitz (1968: 61), who described
it as the “province of uncertainty,” an arena of all-out apocalyptic violent
encounter. The Clausewitzian imagery of friction evokes a dramatic clash
between two sides who direct maximum physical force in an attempt to
dismantle, disorganize, and destroy each other’s internal order (Leonard
1967). Indeed, the main horror at the heart of the classic representation
of war is the fear of disintegration of the internal order and structure of
human society. As John Keegan (1976) put it: “[A]bove all, it is always a
study of solidarity and usually also of disintegration—for it is toward the
disintegration of human groups that battle is directed.”
Looking closely at this system of imagery, three binary signifiers can be
identified as the basis of the imagery of war and battle (see fig. 1):

1. enemy—the enemy is clear, marked, and identifiable

2. arena—the battle is waged in a clear and identified zone in which
enemies confront each other, an area marked by borders and maps
of front and rear
3. violence—maximum violence is discharged within the defined
arena upon the enemy

In the classic representation, these signifiers and core images are translated
into a series of well-established practices, structures, and internal orders,
all revolving around the fear of disintegration and the establishment of
durable and resistant internal cohesion, which will endure the destructive
 The Sociology of Military Knowledge in the IDF | 57

Figure 1 Binary Signifiers of War

forces of battle. These practices and structures are institutionalized as the

organizational incarnation of what is usually described as the ‘modern
military’ (Moskos and Burke 1998) or, more recently, as the ‘Fordist mili-
tary’ (King 2006) and might include the following: (1) internal/organiza-
tional/bureaucratic order, such as hierarchy, control, planning, obedience,
orders, rules, and laws; (2) internal social order and social relations, such
as cohesion, camaraderie, leadership, and moral and regimental pride;
(3) individual/psychological order, such as obedience, endurance, loyalty,
and sacrifice; and (4) doctrines and knowledge, such as command and
control, military planning, strategy, and field manuals.
These sets of structures and practices can be understood as institutional
translations of the fear of disintegration, rationalized and legitimized as
the functional solution to the challenge of disintegration. This is a clas-
sic representation regime in the sense that there is a direct and seamless
link between the signifiers of war—for example, the basic imagery of the
apocalyptic clash of destructive forces—and the institutionalized struc-
tures and practices that they encompass. As a result, there is an obvious
and direct link between the horror of disintegration and the dress code, the
‘break and build’ of basic training, the demand for blind obedience, and the
harshness of physical training. It is easier to justify demands for cohesion,
fraternity, camaraderie, and sacrifice when the combat unit is conceived as
an unbreakable crystal (Katriel 1999). These practices, values, and concepts
are imagined, translated, justified, and legitimized in direct correspon-
dence to the problems of order, endurance, and destructive forces.
58 | Zeev Lerer and Sarit Amram-Katz

The Representation Crisis

This portrait of the modern military engaged in modern warfare in which

the three binaries of enemy, arena and violence are clearly delineated has
been typical of the IDF since its establishment. It was set in the mold of the
Western militaries of the great wars of the twentieth century, borrowing
its structures, values, and knowledge from them (Ostfeld 1995). The IDF’s
wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 were conventional wars, with a clear
and definite enemy, border lines marking front and rear, and the practice
of all-out violence against the enemy in the defined arena—all conforming
to the codes of the classic representation of war.
In recent decades, beginning with the aftermath of the First Lebanon War,
the IDF has been involved in a series of operations of varying character that
do not conform to or resemble the classic portrayals of war. They are also
non-conforming with regard to the main binary signifiers in terms of a clear
enemy located in a defined arena against which full violence is directed.1
Such were the two Intifadas, the disengagement operations from Lebanon
and Gaza, and the post-Oslo redeployment. These operational settings were
accompanied, in the field of military studies, by a flurry of what might be
termed ‘new war’ theories and concepts (Toobey and Padan 2010): ‘revolution
in military affairs’;2 ‘operations other than war’;3 ‘battlefield of the future’;4
‘war and anti-war’ (Toffler and Toffler 1993); ‘hybrid threats’ (Hoffman 2009);
‘unrestricted warfare’ (Liang and Xiangsui 1999); ‘fourth-generation warfare’
(Hammes 2007); ‘compound war’ (Bauman 2001); and ‘full-spectrum opera-
tions’,5 to name a few of the prominent examples. Many of these conceptu-
alizations relied on more general theories of complexity, chaos, or systems
theory, and even on post-structuralist philosophy (Ben-Ari et al. 2010).
What is common to these new structures of knowledge is that they are
based on the premise that the business of war has changed in an almost
unrecognizable way from the old classic order, that the enemies have
changed, and that the new structures have altered war-making by breaking
up old symmetries and employing new uses of space, time, organizational
structures, means of war-making, and operational practices. Moreover,
the technological, cultural, and social context of war has changed in an
immense way from the previous manner in which industrialized nation-
states waged war. This is due to the potential for full social mobilization in
a globalized, high-tech, informational, media-centered context. Even con-
ventional militaries themselves, with their internal structures, hierarchies,
motivations, and values, have changed in a far-reaching way as a result of
these technological innovations.
In other words, this ‘new war knowledge’ represents a collective decons­
truction of the old classic representation of war, which is being challenged
 The Sociology of Military Knowledge in the IDF | 59

and is losing its status as a reflection of the natural order of things. More­­
over, what is deconstructed is not just the classic ontology of war but, pri-
marily, the epistemology of war. That is, what is dismissed and disputed
is not only the reality and practice of war-making but also, and sometimes
mainly, the very perception of order and reality on which the representa-
tion is based. Much of the ‘new knowledge’ displaces the old perceptions
of reality as linear, rational, hierarchical, and categorical (i.e., ‘modern’)—
notions on which the classic regime rests. Rather, it favors other concep-
tions of reality, such as complexity, hybridization, systems, or chaos.
This deconstruction of the classic representation is based upon a collec-
tive blurring of the three main binary signifiers of war (see fig. 2) under
discussion here, that is, enemy, arena, and violence. The new war knowl-
edge obscures the representation of these familiar binaries and mixes them
up. Thus, the enemy ceases to be represented as a marked and physically
identifiable object but is instead invisible. It is no longer located in a clear,
delimited arena, defined by a border line. The total and all-out kinetic vio-
lence that is to be practiced in this defined arena against a defined enemy
becomes intermittent, unexpected, multi-localized, and multifaceted.
Indeed, the mere notion of violence is sometimes tabooed. Thus, the basic
triangle of signifiers that outline the apocalyptic space in which the inte-
grating and disintegrating forces collide disappears in favor of a dynamic

Figure 2 Representation Crisis

60 | Zeev Lerer and Sarit Amram-Katz

and unrecognized form of representation. This constant blurring of the

signifiers can be termed a ‘crisis in the representation of war’. The old
triangle is replaced not by a clear new form but, rather, by a constant para-
digmatic and practical uncertainty.6

Crisis and Capital: Order-Forging and

Order-Deciphering Knowledge

Going back to the Bourdieuian field of military knowledge production, we

suggest that the dynamics of construction and deconstruction of the clas-
sic representation of war are closely linked to the structure of capital in the
field. More specifically, we suggest a distinction between two broad types
of capital-producing knowledge systems that can be discerned in this field,
namely, order-forging knowledge and order-deciphering knowledge.
By order-forging knowledge, we mean theories and concepts that gain
their capital by the promise to strengthen—or forge—clear and well-
established internal organizational orders. This type of knowledge, which
resembles Max Weber’s ideal type of ‘instrumental rationality’ (Shenhav
1999), focuses on reducing practical uncertainties within a solid perception
of the reality of war. Indeed, the grand psychological and sociological con-
cepts translated into the IDF’s procedures through its ‘classic wars’ of 1948,
1956, 1967, and 1973 (Ben-Ari et al. 2010) are very much organized around
the main problématique of the classic representation of war, that is, how to
create, maintain, and rehabilitate the different levels of internal military
order amid the apocalyptic storm of the dismantling forces of battle.
Thus, one of the major strains of research and practice is subsumed
within the problem of individual disintegration during battle. This prob-
lem has been translated into concepts such as ‘stress’, ‘battle stressors’,
‘combat stress reaction’, ‘trauma’, and ‘post-trauma’ (Noy, Nardi, and
Solomon 1986; Solomon 1993; Solomon, Noy, and Bar-On 1986; Steiner
and Neumann 1978). It has also resulted in professional military practices,
such as front-line treatment methods (Solomon, Shklar, and Mikulinser
2005), that aim to reconcile and rehabilitate individuals’ psychological
condition, as well as internal organizational structures, such as the Depart-
ment of Mental Health of the IDF Medical Corps, and an extensive array
of military psychologists stationed at the brigade level.
Another important strand of social science research and practice has con-
centrated on the preservation of military order. Some of the major concepts
representing much of the traditional social science contribution to military
knowledge and practice—motivation, morale, leadership, adaptation, cohe-
sion, and personnel selection (see, e.g., Gal 1986; Gal and Manning 1987;
 The Sociology of Military Knowledge in the IDF | 61

Israelashvily 1978; Kalay 1983; Ronen 1989; Rosenberg and Ziv 1968)—are
all social integration concepts that promise solutions to the objective of
preventing disintegration. These have been imported, translated, and insti-
tutionalized into organizational structures and practices since the establish-
ment of the IDF. Researchers who had worked on the ‘American Soldier’
project during World War II obtained from it integrational social-psycholog-
ical theories and concepts, such as motivation, morale, cohesion, and trust,
while others modeled personnel selection practices on those of various
Western militaries and the academic field (Ostfeld 1995). Both strains were
incorporated into IDF organiza­tional structures in the form of the Military
Psychology Unit, later to become the Department of Behavioral Science.
This focus was the result of the rigid categories of the classic knowledge
regime, which leaves very little room for the importation and utilization
of social science knowledge other than that which fits its narrow problem
areas. These spaces form ‘selection gates’ that allow the incorporation of
knowledge, theories, and concepts that are justified by their promise to
maintain and support the established internal military order and prepare
it for battle. This also makes order-forging knowledge the main capital-
yielding option in the Bourdieuian field of knowledge production within
the frame of the classic representation of war.
However, when the reality of war itself is problematized or deconstructed
into a paradigmatic uncertainty—or what we termed earlier a ‘crisis in
the representation of war’—new capital is created in the field by what we
describe as order-deciphering knowledge. This may be defined as knowl-
edge that gains its capital from the promise of revealing or deciphering an
alternative order of war and the battlefield—one that is not yet fully under-
stood. In other words, this knowledge gains its capital by both creating and
reducing uncertainty regarding the understanding of the reality of war itself.
We suggest that this is descriptive of much of the above-mentioned flow
of ‘new battlefield’ theories, concepts, and essays of the last two decades.
This new war knowledge often starts with a debunking or deconstruction
of the classic representation of war by representing the three binaries as
blurred, mixed up, or downright non-existent. The mixed and blurred
binaries leave wide-open gaps for translations of knowledge by agents
and institutions, affording them greater leeway to decipher and recipher
the new epistemology of the reality of war itself.

Dynamics of Crisis and Capital: Follow the Binaries

This discussion by no means suggests that a two-phased change has occurred,

or that the old order-forging knowledge, with its agents, institutions, and
62 | Zeev Lerer and Sarit Amram-Katz

capital, has been comp­letely replaced by a new regime of knowledge. We do

not even suggest that the classic representation of war and the three aligned
binaries have left the field of war­-making forever. Rather, we propose that
they are all alive and kicking and that their dynamic presence still orders
and anchors the field of military knowledge production. We further argue
that this presence can go far to explain the dynamics, fluidity, and temporal
alterations in the field and that, by following their repre­sentations in differ-
ent contexts and circumstances, we can try to make sense of the shifts and
transitions between the different types of knowledge.
Analyzing the Israeli case from the 1990s, a wide variety of order-deci-
phering knowledge translations can be traced within the military field.
These include the incorporation into the military organi­za­tion of (1) aca-
demic, managerial, and business knowledge; (2) sociology of civil military
relations knowledge; (3) post-structural and critical sociology knowledge;
(4) post-structural, complexity, systems, and hybridization theories. These
were present alongside—and many times were confronted and disputed
by—a drive for forging knowledge. This drive was carried out mainly by
agents and institutions that rejected the new knowledge and advocated
an orthodox, purist military position, one that sees accumulated military
knowledge, and the military profession as a whole, as essentially unique.
This standpoint rejects any crisis of representa­tion, asserting that war has
a stable and essentialist ‘nature’ and that all operational contexts must
conform to the laws of the classic knowledge of war. It devalues new war
knowledge as a dan­ger­ous hybridization, or even contamination, of the
military field, leading to confu­sion, weakness, and defeat in battle, and
is also associated with a call for military autonomy in policies, decision-
making, personnel management, and war-waging practices.
A full analysis of the actual translations of these strains of knowledge
and the organizational traces that were left at different times by different
and conflicting actors is well beyond the scope of the present endeavor.
These translations were by no means what Bruno Latour (2005) viewed as
‘messenger translations’ (i.e., direct and linear translations of knowledge
into some form of practice); rather, they were ‘intermediate translations’,
that is, they were changed, modified, and adapted to the interaction of
actors and forces in the field. Their mutual effect can be best described
as creating complex and constant dynamic hybridizations of military
knowledge and practice.
However, we can trace times, circumstances, and contexts in which the
‘gates of translation’ opened up, and deciphering knowledge was vigor-
ously employed in the military field. We can also find contexts and set-
tings in which the gates closed, translations were rejected, and a vigorous
urge to purify the knowledge hybrids was evident, sometimes bordering
 The Sociology of Military Knowledge in the IDF | 63

on a witch-hunt. The former scenario is generally descriptive of the field

from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s. The latter describes the three years in
the aftermath of the Second Lebanon War, which was fought in the sum-
mer of 2006. In order to explain these ebbs and flows between deciphering
and forging knowledge transla­tions, we suggest going back and following
the dynamics of the deconstruction and reconstruct­ion of the three princi-
pal binaries of the classic representation of war (see fig. 3).
Along these lines, we further suggest that, in settings where social and
operational circumstances converged to allow for the collective construc-
tion of the binaries as ‘aligned’ in terms of arena, enemy, and violence, the
classic representation of war was evoked, along with its tight and famil-
iar chains of translations. The gaps of problematization closed down and
allowed only questions regarding the maintenance of the established inter-
nal orders. Moreover, where failure or defeat followed episodes of transla-
tion, the Bourdieuian field of military knowledge was swept by the urge to
purify. Purists reigned supreme, and deciphering knowledge capital was
devalued and even directly blamed for the perceived defeat, as was the case
in the aftermath of the Lebanon war. On the other hand, in circumstances
where collective perceptions of arena, enemy, and violence did not conform
to the three binaries, the field opened up to deciphering knowledge trans-
lations. To illustrate this, we shall briefly sketch the alignments of binaries
and the sort of knowledge that has been capitalized and translated.
The Oslo peace agreements of the 1990s momentarily abolished the
enemy binary, which had been represented by the PLO and its milita-
rized structures. Foes became allies overnight; all-out engagement per
the violence binary (as in the First Lebanon War) became organizational
cooperation and was framed as ‘peacekeeping’. The arena binary of south
Lebanon (known then as ‘Fatahland’) was replaced by a patchwork map
of the West Bank, representing a division of labor in the areas of adminis-
trative and security control. This inversion of signifiers opened the gates
for three main strains of deciphering knowledge. First, at the operational
practice level, concepts such as ‘peacekeeping operations’ and ‘opera-
tions other than war’ gained prominence in military discourse as alterna-
tive framings of the reality of classic war-waging. Second, theories that
deciphered reality as flux, change, and constant uncertainty and those
that viewed organiza­tions as adaptive and flexible structures were also
imported and translated. These structures gained their deciphering capital
through the sense of instability and uncertainty induced by this sudden
inversion of the familiar binaries of war. Most notable among these were
various versions of open systems theories.
Third, theories of military sociology and civil-military relations in post-
industrialized Western societies, which accounted for changes in military
Figure 3 Forging and Deciphering Knowledge: The Israeli Case
 The Sociology of Military Knowledge in the IDF | 65

structures and practice following social and economic changes that reshuf-
fled the old military orders, were imported.7 This ‘social turn’ in mili-
tary knowledge was also a result of the inversion of the binaries and the
uncertainty regarding the motivational and social mobilization that this
blurring entailed.8 Finally, the inversion also allowed in a flurry of private
sector and business management knowledge, based on the reciphering of
reality as a competitive market society and a reframing of the military and
its commanders as organizational managers and actors.9 Perhaps the most
blatant examples were the formal adoption of ‘total quality management’
as the military’s management policy10 and the major structural reforms at
the end of the 1990s that were formally rooted in centralization-decentral-
ization management practices (Zeevi-Farkash 1998).
The era following the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, the reappearance of
organized terror, and the Second Intifada further blurred and complicated
the binaries. They converged locally and momentarily, materializing in the
wake of terror attacks, in violent clashes with Palestinian Authority secu-
rity personnel, or in grand military campaigns, such as Operation Defen-
sive Shield in 2002, and then returned to their inverted situation of unseen
enemy, undefined arena, and limited use of violence in between these orga-
nized operations. This fluctuating, transient, and constellational state of the
binaries capitalized both the knowledge structures involved and the agents
deciphering this flux and transience in terms of systems, complexity, chaos,
and hybridization.
Thus, deciphering knowledge gained prominence over classic knowl-
edge and was allowed back into the mainstream of military planning and
thinking in the form of the Center for Systems Research. Moreover, it was
designated as the official operation planning methodology at area com-
mand and general staff levels (Shelach and Limor 2007: 197). It was trans-
lated into tactical operational practices in some cases and by some actors,
yielding new operational concepts, such as ‘swarming’, ‘imprinting’, and
‘snailing’, as well as wider concepts of decentralized warfare (Assa and
Yaari 2005), and also inspired the official operational doctrine (Shelach
and Limor 2007). Other brands of knowledge, capitalized to a more lim-
ited extent, were operational classification systems such as ‘high-intensity
conflict/low-intensity conflict’, ‘symmetric and asymmetric’, and ‘full-
war spectrum’, which made sense of the flux in binaries by attempting to
classify their main possible configurations.
In 2005, an even more extreme inversion of the binaries was evident
in the disengagement operation from Gaza. The enemy was replaced by
Israel’s own flesh and blood. The arena was not a war zone but the private
sphere of the state’s citizens. Violence was not only inhibited but com-
pletely taboo. This was also an inversion of the core image of war—the
66 | Zeev Lerer and Sarit Amram-Katz

military project was itself inverted. Instead of using organized violence

in order to disintegrate the enemy physically and psychologically, the
operation used organized abstention from violence in order to reintegrate
citizens. Thus, the main object of deciphering was the subjectivity of the
‘Other’ (i.e., the Jewish settlers in Gaza). The goal was not to probe the
physical and organizational strengths and weakness of the settlers in order
to disintegrate their structure but rather to avoid violent resistance. This
capitalized and privileged a wealth of deciphering knowledge that focused
on the Other: psychology, negotiation, conflict resolution, identity politics,
and even theology. This knowledge was employed in extensive exercises of
‘mental preparation’ (Abramowitz 2010; Cafri 2010; Edelson 2007) in which
the settlers and their beliefs were explained to the troops and non-violent
techniques of manipulating subjects into non-resistance were practiced.
All this deciphering and translation ceased abruptly in the summer
of 2006 with the outbreak of what was later dubbed the Second Leba-
non War. Whatever the reasons or explanations for it,11 it is clear that a
bright triangle of binaries was shining over the operational circumstances,
which evolved within hours after what could have been understood as
just another terror attack at the northern border. The situation was collec-
tively framed as an ‘all-out war’. The frame of enemy, arena, and violence
was installed over Hezbollah, the border line with Lebanon, and the all-
out mobilization and engagement of the IDF’s firepower.
The 2006 war was quickly, and very publicly, considered a failure. It was
followed by a period of denunciation, harsh criticism, numerous inquiries,
reports of ‘lessons learned’, and eventual military rehabilitation (Harel
and Issacharoff 2008; Shelach and Limor 2007; Winograd 2008). Common
to all of these was the assumption that this had indeed been a real, full-
blown, classic war. Its failure was attributed to a fundamental deficiency
in the army’s readiness and ability to operate within the classic practices
of ground warfare.12 More­over, the failure in the classic chains of transla-
tion was mainly and directly attributed to the neglect of these classic prac-
tices, resulting in their virtual oblivion, due to the coterminous influence
of new war knowledge and ideas (Shelach and Limor 2007).
A back-to-basics period and the reforging of old orders followed, led by
Chief of Staff General Gavriel (Gabi) Ashkenazi. Major military reforms of
the previous years were reversed or revised,13 and all doctrine and training
were recentered around the classic representation of war.14 In other words,
military knowledge and practice were once again inspired and framed by
the collective imagination of the triangle of binaries. Other consequences
included a closure of the gates of translation and the media being strictly
forbidden access to the military.15 The military no longer countenanced
deciphering knowledge, while the Center for Systems Research and the
 The Sociology of Military Knowledge in the IDF | 67

philosophy and practice it inspired were scapegoated as the main propa-

gators of the defeat. Effects-based doctrines were revised in favor of classic
ground maneuvers, and critical sociology was practically banned. Even
the collaboration of the chief of staff’s advisor with feminist academics
was harshly attacked.16

Conclusion

In this article, we have proposed a preliminary explanation for the tur-

bulence and fluctuations in the field of military knowledge production
in Israel that have occurred over the last two decades. We suggest that
they are related to how war is represented or imagined, and that these
representations revolve around the main binary signifiers that define the
classic representation of war: enemy, arena, and violence. We have further
identified a crisis in the classic representation, which produces a continu-
ally shifting paradigm in which binaries are moved around by constant
dialectics of deconstruction and reconstruction of the classic representa-
tion. We tried to show how this fluidity of representation creates different
types of capital in the Bourdieuian field of military knowledge production
and influences the selection of different types of knowledge, which we
term order-forging and order-deciphering knowledge.
Are the turbulent shifts between forging and deciphering knowledge
no more than a symptom of the twilight of modern war? This may the
case, but this examina­tion of the Israeli experience shows that the classic
representation of war continues to play a central and dominant cultural
role. The turbulence indicates that this representation regime is deeply
rooted in the minds, knowledge, organizational structures, and insti-
tutionalized practices of the military. Its cultural dominance makes it a
default scheme—a prototype—against which circumstances and contexts
are conceived, compared, and understood. It may be that what decipher-
ing knowledge is actually deciphering are the ways in which new contexts
deviate from this prototype.
Questions regarding how the binaries are moved around and which
social dynamics impel these shifts are left open. While our analysis, by
relating capital to construction and deconstruction representations, at
least partly implicates knowledge agents and actors in the Bourdieuian
field, this cannot be the complete answer. The possible answers are as
varied as theoretical and philosophical inclinations can imagine them and
can be addressed and discussed from many points of view.
Can these mobile dynamics of binary signifiers that converge and dis-
perse around the classic representation of war be related to other military
68 | Zeev Lerer and Sarit Amram-Katz

phenomena? We think that they might. Smith’s (2005) work, which theo-
retically inspired much of our analysis, applies this sort of examination
of the social construction and deconstruction of binary codes to the cases
of mobilization in the Suez, Gulf, and Iraq wars. Topel (2009) shows how
the inclusion and exclusion of women in the IDF’s operations follow
those patterns of binaries, demonstrating how women’s exclusion, as
part and parcel of the classic representation, is automatically reactivated
in circumstances where binaries converge, as opposed to different sorts
of inclusion practices that occur when they are dispersed. Ben-Ari et al.
(2010), following IDF companies at the outbreak of the Second Intifada,
show how models of ‘textbook war’ and ‘textbook compa­nies’ still frame
the reactions and interpretations of soldiers and commanders alike in
operational situations that do not at all conform to those models. This
suggests the need for further examination of the tensions between these
representations and the study of locally created and devised operational
practices in different contexts.

Zeev Lerer is a social psychologist and sociologist. He earned his PhD

degree at Tel Aviv University and has served in various positions in the
IDF Department of Behavioral Science, specializing in crisis negotiation
and in combat psychology, gender, and ethnicity in organizations. He is a
retired Lieutenant Colonel, currently teaches in the Department of Gender
Studies at Tel Aviv University, and is Joint Chair of the Military Sociology
Section of the Israel Sociological Association.

Sarit Amram-Katz is an organizational psychologist and has an MA

degree from Ben-Gurion University in Beersheva. She has served at various
positions in the IDF Department of Behavioral Science, specializing in gen-
der, combat psychology, and human resource research. She is now a Major
in the IDF and the Head of its Military Psychology Research Section.
 The Sociology of Military Knowledge in the IDF | 69

Notes

1. This is true of Western militaries in general. However, the present analysis is

limited to the IDF.
2. http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/battle/chp3.html.
3. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/100-15/
Ch9.htm.
4. http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/battle/bftoc.html.
5. http://www.northropgrumman.com/analysis-center/other-publications/
assets/Full_Spectrum_Operations.pdf.
6. By ‘practical uncertainty’, we mean the blurring of the tight translations
between the representation of war as a signification system and the internal
organizational structures entailed (signified) by it.
7. Such imports included the I/0 theory (Moskos 1977) and the sociology of mili-
tary social structure, which looks at relations between various social groups
and the military’s internal social hierarchies and stratification. With regard to
gender and the military structure, see Izraeli (1997). For ethnicity and military
stratification, see Smooha (1983–1984).
8. This social turn is described in detail by Sher and Ben-Eliyahu (this volume).
The main platform of translation was the Civil-Military Research Unit, which
was established within the Department of Behavioral Science in the man-
power wing of the IDF and worked in collaboration with the Israel Democ-
racy Institute as part of their ‘civil-military project’ in the late 1990s.
9. For an extensive review of the influence of market logic on IDF knowledge
systems and practice, see Levy (2011).
10. The adoption of this policy was a directive of the chief of staff in 1992, fol-
lowed by the establishment of a Quality and Excellence Unit at the doctrinal
and training branch (State Comptroller 2001: 136).
11. An analysis of the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War is also well beyond
the theoretical and practical scope of this article.
12. This might be clarified by following the titles and agendas of the inquiry
committees set up after the 2006 war within the military. Each committee
was engaged in an examination of the operation of the classic military orders
described in the introduction to this article.
13. Such reversals or revisions affected, for example, the 2004–2006 structural
reorganization ordered by the previous chief of staff, General Dan Halutz,
and the implementation of the recommendations of reform committees, such
as the Ben Bassat Committee (2006).
14. This approach was epitomized by Ashkenazi’s slogan that the military knows
only two modes of being: preparing for war and engaging in war.
15. That is, there is no access by the media that is not controlled and tightly moni-
tored by the IDF.
16. The attacks were carried to the point of portraying this collaboration as a con-
spiracy to weaken the IDF (see Lerer 2009).
70 | Zeev Lerer and Sarit Amram-Katz

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