ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some ethnographic methods used to analyze military organizations that have been applied for more than 20 years within the French armies. A civilian person, with access to data and also a strong and relevant network within the French Defence Department and authorized to share a long time presence with a military group. The doctrine holds that the Outsider has a structurally imposed incapacity to comprehend alien groups, statuses, cultures and societies. Unlike the Insider, the Outsider has neither been socialized in the group nor has engaged in the run of experience that makes up its life, and therefore cannot have the direct, intuitive sensitivity that alone makes empathic understanding possible. Piette wrote about Goffman's posture that "the positive test of a well carried out ground study appears when your activity of sociologist is forgotten or when the representatives of the other sex of the group become attractive".
