Que l'on considère le champ sociologique et l'on découvre une pluralité de conceptualisations générales. Faut-il ne voir dans cette diversité que la confusion temporaire d'une science en formation ou convient-il de l'interpréter comme une donnée inhérente aux sciences de l'homme? Mais à vouloir répondre directement à cette interrogation, on risque de tenir pour acquis ce qui reste problématique. Rien ne nous assure, en effet, que ces langages instituent des points de vue authentiquement distincts et on ne peut écarter, a priori, la possibilité qu'au terme d'une recherche sur les vocabulaires et leur ordre sous-jacent, on ne découvre l'unité de leur visée du réel. II nous semble done nécessaire, avant d'aborder certains aspects d'une épistémologie des sciences de la culture, de vérifier la spécificité et d'éprouver l'utility de divers schémas conceptuels (i).

The professional armed forces of Western European nation-states developed out of feudal forms through a process of “institutional differentiation”. By “institutional differentiation” is meant the bureaucratic transformation by which the armed forces emerged as a distinct organization fashioned by its own system of recruitment and training, by the accumulation of significant amounts of its own resources, and operating in terms of its specialized format and calculus.

These three statements distil the dilemma of the armed forces in Britain—a dilemma compounded of obscure and conflicting goals, a pervasive anxiety as to the nature and viability of military professionalism and internal conflicts and misunderstandings which themselves symbolise a deeper alienation from contemporary British society.

In modern societies profession and formal organization are the most important institutional patterns controlling occupational and administrative decisions and actions. They have many characteristics in common. To use Parsons' pattern variables: in both cases we find universal standards, specificity of expertness, and affective neutrality (I). Bureaucratic as well as professional authority is based on special knowledge and skill (Fachwissen) and may be characterized as functional authority (2). Both professional and bureaucratic status are achieved, not ascribed positions.

It is the purpose of this paper to consider some of the features of the military officer-corps which make for its uniqueness compared to other professional groups. In spite of the lack in Norway of any militaristic tradition, the corps appears in many ways distinct from the main body of society. To a greater extent than within other occupations, there seems to be a tendency toward uniformity among the military officers on the basis of particular ideals and values. This characteristic has often been related to the supposed social composition of the group. There has been a widely shared assumption that military officers have been recruited from a rather limited milieu, and particularly, that the group has been highly self-recruited. As far as the Norwegian Army officers are concerned, the data about their social background do not support this view. It seems relevant, therefore, to relate the singularity of the group to its educational aspects. Before entering on the main theme of this paper, however, some comment on the social composition might be appropriate.

The advent of a new branch of social research under the name of civil-military relations studies within the course of the last two decades may be taken as an indication that the relationship between military and civil institutions has become one of the crucial problem areas in highly developed industrial societies. Whether this state of affairs might be characterized in terms of an increasing militarization of industrial society, like the Garrison State theory implies, or on the other hand, as a permeation of military institutions by specific values of civil institutions, does not now seem to be clear. Very likely, the problem before us does not lend itself to clear-cut statements like these. Notwithstanding the complexity of the relationships involving the two subsystems and the divergence of interpretations by different students of civil military relations, there appears to be agreement that both military and civil institutions have lost some of their relative autonomy. Something like a reciprocal interpenetration of both subsystems, without precedent in the history of industrial societies, has taken place. Likewise, the reasons for changes in the relations between the two sectors seem to be beyond controversy. The question of national defense has become a crucial problem of industrial societies which has been traced back to changes in the traditional world balance of power on the one hand, and revolutionary advances of weapons technology on the other. Concentrated as they are in the hands of two overwhelming antagonists, modern weapons, because of their range and destructive power, are capable of dealing a decisive blow to the war potential of the opponent within a matter of hours. Consequently, the outcome of any conflict must be anticipated within its earliest phase; to put it another way, the antagonists have to be prepared to face a showdown at any moment or risk their own destruction. It is for this reason that the full deployment of the military potential before a conflict is even in sight has become a postulate of modern military policy (2). Yet, permanent mobilization, as it is required by a rational military policy in the atomic age, tends to call in question the very social order which it to be secured against outside aggression.