The Visuality of Military Recruitment: US and UK Militaries and PMSCs Compared

Abstract

Military sociology and international relations have extensively written about the transformation of the military profession and the changing motivations underlying military service. The ways in which military recruitment strategies have evolved in response to these changes, however, is much less investigated. Although some scholars have examined the evolving discourses surrounding recruitment, existing literature has primarily examined written texts, overlooking the visual component of recruitment strategies. Moreover, existing scholarship has almost exclusively examined the military recruitment strategies of public military organizations, largely disregarding the increasing role played by private military and security companies (PMSCs) as potentially alternative employers. This paper draws on Peircean semiotics to systematically compare the visual dimension of public and private military organizations’ recruitment strategies in the US and in the UK between 2001 and the present day. By examining whether and to what extent states’ armed forces and PMSCs rely on similar visual identity systems, this paper provides novel insights into the recruitment strategies and shifting role conceptions of both public and private military organizations contributing to private and visual security studies alike.

Panel: What Do You Want to Die For? Military Recruitment in Comparative Perspective

All papers

EISS 2019 programme

@inproceedings{eiss-2019-the-visuality-of-military-recruitment-us-and-uk-militaries-and-pmscs-compared,
  author = {Eugenio Cusumano},
  title = {The Visuality of Military Recruitment: US and UK Militaries and PMSCs Compared},
  booktitle = {European Security Studies Conference 2019},
  year = {2019},
  url = {https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-the-visuality-of-military-recruitment-us-and-uk-militaries-and-pmscs-compared.html}
}