Citizen, Soldier, or Citizen-Soldier? Negotiating Identity in the US National Guard

This study examines the construction of US Army National Guard members' dual identities as soldiers and civilians and posits processes, including behavioral practice, spatial displacement, and narrativity, which soldiers use to reconcile these potentially contradictory identities to develop an understanding of themselves as "citizen-soldiers." Ethnographic evidence gathered from in-depth interviews suggests that for National Guard members who have never experienced deployment, the two identities of civilian and soldier are mostly separated. However, after experiencing deployment and reintegration, soldier and civilian identities become more intertwined and individuals must reorganize their identity according to different conceptions; integrating on a more permanent basis two different cultural modes of being. In light of the National Guard's increased participation in deployments post-9/11, this reorganization of identity is contributing to a shift in the meaning of "citizen-soldiery" in the current US context.