Canadian Airborne article
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Posted by Michael Yared from Virginia VA U.S. on August 04, 2021 at 13:06:49:
There is an article in Armed Forces & Society, published by the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society in the Spring 1999 (vol. 25, n. 3) issue titled "Rites of Passage and Group Bonding in the Canadian Airborne", by Donna Winslow. pages 429-457. The
abstract is as follow: "In the early 1990s, the Canadian public was shocked by gruesome scenes of humiliating & digusting initiation rites in one of the Canadian
Airborne's Commando Units. It may seem incomprehensible to an outsider that the initiates actually participated voluntarily in these rites, but the importance of the ritual
is, in part, a reflection of the nature of the requirements of the unit at this stage. Initiates are strangers to each other & to the Airborne. The bonding of the initiation pulls
them together in a very short period of time. This phenomenon was noted in the 1950s by Aronson & Mills, who remarked that an initiate who endures severe hazing is
likely to find membership in a group all the more appealing. In these rituals, soldiers prove their readiness to participate in the group regardless of personal cost, thus
gaining peer group acceptance. Following a brief description of the Canadian Airborne Regiment & its initiation rites, the model developed in anthropology to describe
rites of passage in traditional societies is used to examine the initiation process according to the classical pattern of separation, liminal inversion, & reintegration
associated with such rites."
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