Culture Shock

Abstract

‘Socially immature, lacking mutual respect and having led self-indulgent, materialistic lives, they are all too easily shocked by the close confines of military life.’¹ This verdict on the calibre of British Army recruits was the result of a research project entitled ‘Culture Shock and the British Infantry Recruit’, published in 2006. The study found that recruits were ‘increasingly self-absorbed and undisciplined’ and that ‘they come from backgrounds that have suffered from the decline of the traditional family’. Leaving school ‘without any set of moral values’, many young men were simply unable to cope with military life and were failing as a result. The report concluded that recruit training centres were ‘sites of cultural collisions, between the infantry, with a clear focus on the task and the team, and a civil society that is increasingly focused on image and the individual’.