Closing ranks: Leadership and the mundanization of the extraordinary in military history

Abstract

Using examples from military history, this paper takes Alvesson and Sveningsson’s ‘Extraordinarizaton of the Mundane’ article and inverts it. They suggested that what counted as ‘leadership’ was not the acts of formal leaders but the interpretive work of subordinates, who rendered mundane actions by leaders – such as chatting to employees – as extraordinary. Here, I suggest that the reverse process also occurs – the mundanization of the extraordinary. In this case subaltern groups are given mundane tasks to inhibit their achievement of extraordinary tasks, or, when extraordinary tasks are achieved, those same tasks are rendered mundane by their superordinates and thus devalued. Even when successful challenges to this hierarchy of value are made the superordinate culture tends to close ranks against the upstarts and reaffirm the status quo ante, or simply deny the possibility of subaltern groups achieving something so extraordinary.