Breaking the spell: Have cell phones transformed reservists’ timeout?

Abstract

Military reserve service in Israel and the use of cell phones seem to be mutually exclusive. As citizens drafted annually for a limited period, soldiers on reserve duty constitute a unique community on timeout from which family are excluded and during which social status is laid aside. This state of things, I argue, has been challenged by the invasion of the cell phone with its capacity to cross over physical and symbolic boundaries, thereby polluting the air with voices from the hinterland. In this article I introduce a model according to which the affordances of a new technology redefine the embedded traits and constraints of the ‘timeout’. Working in combination with the identity discourse of the participants and the cultural meanings of timeout, cell technology challenges the traditional understanding of reserve duty as a timeout period. I show how the cell phone has polluted the heretofore secluded space of reservist time by reintroducing differences in status, culture and nationality into the isolation, equality and fraternity of miluim (reserve duty), and how participants read this new situation, and sometimes contest it.