Vägen till värnplikten

Om tillträde till en institution

Abstract

The article describes and analyses how an ethnographical access to the Swedish military institution was obtained within the context of a PhD project. Often, institutions are characterized as hierarchical and bureaucratical, making it seem that there could only be one way in. The article shows this to be false by depicting a process in which two parallel routes emerged. One was the official route through the headquarter and the other was trough informal contacts at a lower hierarchical level, illustrating that there are different and sometimes unexpected ways to gain institutional access. However, full access was far from accomplished when ”coming in”: trustworthiness needed to be continuously earnt throughout the fieldwork. Finally, the article shows that access should not be understood as an ”either or” process, and that it instead of being an obstacle to overcome, the process can help generate important learning for the purposes of the research project.