r/CanadianForces as a “Free Place” for “Underlife” in the Canadian Military “Total Institution”

Abstract

Erving Goffman conceptualizes the total institution as one that closely regulates and structures the lives of members, thus attenuating their agency. Resistance to the total institution constitutes what he calls an “underlife” occurring in “free places” outside institutional managerial control. This article locates the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) within the total institutional construct and reflects on user commentary that confirms that Reddit as a social media platform provides a free place for underlife discourse or resistance that attenuates the control of the total institution. Specifically, this article focuses on posts made on r/CanadianForces in reaction to a series of incidents in 2021 regarding alleged inappropriate behavior by senior leadership in the Canadian military. It is argued here that the properties of Reddit, including relative anonymity of posters and the ability of audiences to both create and consume media, allows CAF members to exercise agency by criticizing the organization and its leadership in ways that are inconsistent with organizational norms. This paper contributes to the literature on how members of the armed forces participate in non-institutional social media spaces, including the use of these spaces for acts of resistance.