ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the interpretive models that soldiers use to make sense of their actions and the environment. These were the models that supplied the basic frames of reference Israeli troops use to illuminate soldierly behaviour, formulated ideas about enemies and imagine ideals of military masculinity. The different manner by which Israelis handle this process elicited a number of interesting conversations with the caretakers. The chapter addresses three readerships: fellow social scientists interested in the military, scholars interested in 'things military', and a vague category of 'concerned' Israelis. On a second and more concrete level, simultaneously working on two cases aided in reciprocally relating native Japanese cultural concepts to Israeli notions of military activities. Given Japan's meteoric economic successes between the 1960s and the 1980s, this was a period during which the country's organizations and management methods were a fashionable object of study in the social science.
