Viveka Adelswärd Department of Communication Studies Linköping University

In this article I present results from an exploratory study based on 20 interviews with conscientious objectors in Sweden. The interviews represent a special form of institutional discourse, the "evaluative interview," and are part of a formal procedure aimed at deciding whether or not the conscientious objector in question is to be recommended for alternative civilian service. The procedure has recently been abandoned in Sweden and this article is a comment on this fact. The interviews studied are moral discourses in more than one respect. One of the most obvious reasons is that they deal with moral issues, such as the right to kill. However, they also bring up other moral questions. With what right do we force people to argue for, and verbalize, their views on complicated and personal matters? Is it fair to evaluate the strength of people's convictions by listening to what they are able or willing to express in interviews?

The evaluative interview is a form of institutional discourse that has become an increasingly important tool for professionals in modern society. Social workers interview clients in order to place them in the proper

category; clerks interview customers to find out if they are eligible for bank loans; personnel officers interview applicants in order to find the right person for the job, and so forth. In these interviews an expert--or institutional representative--talks to a layperson in order to base an evaluation of him or her on his verbal performance. The interviewer has to adapt the client frame to the institutional frame ( Agar, 1985) and thus has a typical gatekeeping function ( Erickson & Shultz, 1982). As members of society, and as laypersons in some sense of the word, we are involved in many such interactions in which impressions of us are produced and evaluated, where in fact our "selves" are at stake ( Goffman, 1959). The skills of producing and evaluating impressions are regularly needed to enact and interpret the moral minidramas of everyday life but are tested in specific ways when individuals meet representatives of institutions who have to base a vital decision--at least for the individual--on that meeting.

In evaluative interviews, the professional's aim is to establish an opinion of an individual so as to be able to judge his character: his ability, for example, to perform a job, his moral convictions, or his potential as a student. Embedded within these discourses is the Western notion of the individual as having a coherent self that can be made manifest, seen, and evaluated in a dialogue (cf., e.g., Trilling, 1972; Geertz, 1976). Yet the very fact that the individual's convictions are construed in a dialogue with the professional means that they are coauthored ( Jacoby & Ochs, 1995). Furthermore, such dialogues are not only meetings between one single individual and one single institution but also the voices that are heard and the arguments that are proposed are multifaceted and intertwined in complex ways. Interviewers are also individuals with their particular idiosyncratic arguments, and individual applicants may consciously rely on institutionally grounded arguments.

The evaluative interview with the conscientious objector is an institutional context in which private moral standpoints become public, and the individual's claims are to be put into a conceptual framework of an institution. Every male citizen in Sweden is required by law to do military service, which implies the use of arms. Historically seen, there have been different possibilities to argue for those refusing to do military service, to use arms, or both. The basis for the grounds on which to grant applicants relief from military service have changed over time during the last century. There has been an oscillation between purely moral and more pragmatic grounds; the presumed moral depth of the applicant has sometimes been explicitly foregrounded, sometimes backgrounded.

Before 1872, a Swedish man could be relieved from military service altogether if he could validly claim "distressing circumstances" and get another man to take his place. After 1872 the possibility of "buying" oneself off in this way was eliminated, but one could still be relieved from service altogether, claiming "special and distressing circumstances." For the authorities, such circumstances were not interpreted as the applicant's moral convictions but rather as pragmatic claims such as having to maintain a large family. It was not until 1902 that "serious conscientious doubts"--which then were the same as religious doubts--were accepted as a relevant ground for relief from military service. Later on the possibility of alternative civilian service¹ was opened to those refusing to use arms. The first law dealing with this kind of conscientious objector in Sweden was enacted in 1920. Some years later there was a breakthrough for the idea that "conscientious doubts" of a nonreligious nature also could present grounds for alternative service. In 1943, it was decided that the applicant had to meet an investigator for a personal interview.

The interviews were the main basis for decision up until 1991 and were conducted by professional interviewers instructed to adhere to official guidelines, the last one issued in 1987 by the Conscientious Objectors' Board² (from now on referred to as the Guide). After 1991 it is sufficient for the applicant to sign a written statement certifying that doing armed military service is against his deeply held personal convictions.

The law dealing with conscientious objectors has been revised several times, the last time in 1978. Before this last revision, the law stated that an applicant could be exempted from military service if "the use of arms against another person is incompatible with the serious personal convictions of the conscript and would lead to a deep moral conflict for him" (Svensk Författningssamling,³ 1966, p. 423; author's translation, italics added). According to the revision in 1978, those liable to do military service can apply and be accepted for alternative civilian service "if it can be assumed that doing ordinary military service would be so inconsistent with their serious personal convictions that they will not complete their military service" (Svensk Författningssamling, 1978, p. 524; author's translation, italics added). Notice the difference between the requirements for eligibility for alternative service. In the second version, the moral issue is, as it were, demoralized, or at least subordinated to its practical consequences, compared with the earlier version of the law in which the focus was on the individual's moral convictions and moral conflict. The change in perspective and the fact that the personal moral conflict is also

a pragmatic issue for the armed forces is worth noting ( Adelswärd & Säljö, 1994).

The data for the study presented here consist of 20 interviews involving four professional interviewers⁴ each interviewing five applicants.⁵ The interviews were audiotaped and transcribed in extenso. They were 1 to 1.5 hr long and fairly loosely structured with open questions, especially at the beginning. At the end of the interviews, all the applicants were presented with two hypothetical situations and, in connection with these, they were routinely asked the same set of questions.

When the interviews were finished, the interviewers wrote a report (a formalized summary) of the interview. This was first sent to the applicant for approval and then forwarded by the interviewer to the Conscientious Objectors' Board together with a suggestion recommending or denying the application.⁶

The interviews were quite similar in content and structure. The reasons for this are obvious. Institutional texts are powerful tools in structuring talk as well as for assigning relevancies. The underpinning for the institutional frame can be found in the texts, both the aforementioned Guide ( 1987 ) and the formalized report that the interviewer knows he or she has to base on the interview. The perspective taken--or the frame given--on the topics treated in the interviews is preset by these texts. Furthermore, interviews of this kind are established solutions to specific communicative problems and thus form a special communicative genre, a way of prescribing the form as well as the content of the talk ( Luckmann, 1989).

The interviewers opened and closed the phases as well as the topics. First, there was an introductory phase in which the interviewer, in a monological fashion, gave general information about the law, its implications, and the necessity for the interview. Then he or she proceeded to give information about how the interview was to be conducted, how long the procedure would take, and what rights the applicants had to appeal an unfavorable decision.

In the next phase, the interview proper, the interviewers followed the agenda suggested by the guidelines just mentioned. Seven topics were mentioned in the Guide ( 1987 ) under the heading "Topics that must be discussed," and consequently all interviews included these topics. The remaining five topics are mentioned in the Guide as topics to be introduced at the discretion of the interviewer. The following 12 topics covered 97% of the utterances in the interviews. The first seven topics were brought up in all interviews.

In order to illustrate some of the dilemmas discussed in this article, four interview segments were chosen, one from each interviewer, dealing with the second of the two hypothetical situations presented in the Guide ( 1987 ). These situations face the applicant with a hypothetical moral--or at least argumentative--dilemma, and the thought behind this seems to be that there is a straight connection between the rhetoric level (on which the applicants are supposed to state what would be the right thing for them to do in a certain situation) and their inner conviction. By talking about general and hypothetical cases, the institution seems to see morality as something that the interviewers can filter out by testing the answers and arguments provided against the "right" scheme.

All segments start with the presentation of the hypothetical situation and are followed by a preclosing sequence in which the interviewer routinely first asks whether the applicant has anything to add, then asks him to make a short summary of his reasons for the application. The four sequences have been selected in order to illustrate different ways of handling the moral dilemmas involved in the situation. Two interviews involve applicants who are professed Christians: Anders in Example 1 and Magnus in Example 5. The other two applicants, Johan in Example

4 and Sten in Example 6, do not give religious faith as a reason for their application. Three of the applicants were recommended for alternative civilian service in the reports sent to the Committee; the applicant Sten was not.

Both hypothetical situations face the applicant with an armed aggressor, and one of the premises is that the applicant happens to have a gun in his hand. In the first situation the applicant's own life is threatened by an enemy; in the second situation the lives of innocent bystanders are threatened. There are only two lines of action possible for the applicant: one is to kill the enemy and save his own life or the lives of the innocent bystanders, the other is not to kill the enemy and get killed himself or see innocent people lose their lives. The applicants have to decide and to argue for what they consider the right way to solve these hypothetical dilemmas.

The interviews with the conscientious objectors are activities with some unique qualities. There are dilemmas on many levels, such as, for instance, when the issue of personal convictions and conscience faces questions of democracy. On the one hand, it is wrong in a democratic society to force its members to act against their moral convictions. On the other hand, a democratic society expects everyone to abide by the law. Society's solution to the problem of what to do with those members who refuse to do armed military service is to offer an alternative. However, is everyone entitled to this alternative? The solution to this problem is to let the interviewers decide whether the convictions of the individual applicant are sincere enough. This solution bears a resemblance to Katz ( 1975 )claim that we operate with a notion of essence as an inherent quality, so that for instance, "from a pool of alleged rule breakers juvenile court judges select the 'real' or 'true' delinquents and set them apart from boys who 'made a mistake'" (p. 1370).

The Guide ( 1987 ) emphasized that the interviewer is not to present the applicant with detailed descriptions of concrete situations but rather to point to the general moral dilemma. The important issue is "the attitude of the applicant, that is, if the applicant recognizes the situational conflict or if he shows little or no compassion with the defenseless persons" (p. 9). The solving of the routinized moral dilemma is a fairly complicated

communicative task, but with rather strict limits. The character of routinization is evident when one thinks about what is not brought up in these interviews. For instance, the applicants' private moral problems are not discussed; the moral issue seems limited to the question whether it is right to take the life of others. Being a coward, or having a strong dislike of hierarchical systems, is not a legitimate reason--at least not explicitly--even if both qualities might lead the interviewer to the conclusion that the applicant would not complete his military service. Interviewers and applicants collaborate in construing an honorable reason for not having to do armed military service.

Words like morality, conscience, responsibility, guilt, and victim are used by both interviewers and applicants in these sequences. Their usage indicates both interlocutors' awareness of the moral aspect. By employing these terms when presenting the situation to the applicant, the interviewer stages the situation as a moral one. She does not ask the applicant to hypothesize over what he actually would do but to argue for what would be the right thing to do. It is not an easy task. It presupposes that every individual is capable of having an inner dialogue and of explicitizing a moral calculus, relevant to the institutional rationality in question.

The applicant's moral dilemma is thus the touchstone of the interview, and answers to the hypothetical question are interpreted as arguments for the interviewer to conclude whether or not the applicant has a serious conviction--that is, if he will complete his armed military service if refused alternative civilian service. It is not as simple as there being one "right" answer--for instance, that it is always wrong to kill the aggressor. The Guide ( 1987 ) stated this explicitly and, in fact, in the data there is an instance in which an applicant who discussed the possibility that killing the aggressor would be the morally correct solution to the dilemma was recommended for alternative civilian service.

The Guide ( 1987 ) stated that the interviewer has to "aim at conducting the interview in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere" (p. 11). Furthermore, the interviewer "must not criticize or question the views of the applicant or the reason for these views and may naturally not pose questions that can be regarded as personally insulting" (p. 11). The Guide also stressed that the "questions posed to the applicant may not be phrased in such a way that they can be interpreted as expressions of the interviewer's personal views and values" (p. 11). The recommendation not to question the applicants' views could be seen as contradicting the aim of the interview. The interview was needed by the institution because the insti

tution or society questioned the motives of the applicant. Therefore, the recommendation has a slight "Catch 22" quality and may, in fact, be a first step on the road leading to the death of this particular institution--the abolishment of the interview procedure.

The Guide ( 1987 ) can be seen as part of the institution's impression management in that the institution presents itself to the interviewer and to the applicant as benevolent and impartial, by protecting a positive self-face. A democratic society wants the applicant to have a fair chance; he should not be coerced. The morality of "fair chance" and the morality of "honesty" should be able to balance each other.

The following comparative, but by no means conclusive, analysis of the four sequences chosen will hopefully shed more light on some of the issues raised. In the first excerpt, Example 1, we meet Anders, who is a member of the Swedish Mission Covenant Church, and Interviewer A (Int. A).

In the next 12 turns, the interviewer leaves the topic of miracles and, with reference to the Bible's Golden Rule, asks Anders if he can have a clean conscience if he "passively watches them being battered to death" only because he wants to follow "one of the commandments in the Bible." Anders defends himself by saying that the aggressor and the victims are both people worthy of love and that he cannot shoot anyone. The interviewer asks if it does not make a difference if the aggressor is one and the victims are many:

In the next 29 turns, the interviewer first asks Anders if he has heard or discussed this question before, then reintroduces the topic of whether the number of people who are threatened is relevant to Anders' choice of action. When Anders claims that the number of people being in danger is irrelevant, the interviewer asks him to explain his position.

Interviewer A phrases quite explicitly the applicant's moral dilemma in Example 1a, lines 1-7. Anders tries a simple way out of the dilemma by referring to his answer to the first hypothetical question, implying that it is always wrong to kill. In Example la, line 18 ("But how can you then morally defend such a position"), the interviewer's question seems to imply that Anders does not quite realize the moral dilemma. By using the word "morally," she stresses Anders' personal responsibility. Her framing is in the ethics of consequence. She also presses him into taking a personal stand. Anders counterargues but operates within a slightly different moral frame, a particular, Christian rationality implying other priorities. For him, one solution to the dilemma could be a miracle. His laughter, Example 1a, line 25, and his comments in connection with the laughter suggest that he knows that this way of thinking might be foreign to the interviewer.

His final argument for a solution to the dilemma is discursively occasioned by the intense efforts on the part of the interviewer to make him personally responsible and that are finalized in her reformulation ( Heritage & Watson, 1979) in Example 1c, line 3, in which Interviewer A settles for a principled, and thus legitimate, answer to the hypothetical question. She has reached her point of satisfaction, as it were. The

experienced interviewer knows what arguments are relevant in this particular context. A typical pattern in these interviews is precisely this mutual reaching of the "enough" state ( Adelswärd, 1991). When such a satisfactory (from the interviewer's perspective) statement is put on the floor, either introduced by the applicant, or, as in most cases, reformulated by the interviewer, the sequence can come to an end. From the interviewer's perspective, valid talk--in the relevance preset by the Guide ( 1987 ) and the upcoming summary--has been produced.

For Anders, a legitimate way of arguing convincingly within his Christian frame is to label the act of killing the aggressor a case of sinning against God (Example 1b, lines 24-25, 31-33). A sin is something absolute, nonnegotiable in his faith, and the concept presupposes an inherent argumentation, as the religious term fixates the institutionalized Christian perspective and thus the argumentation embedded in the concept. By referring to "sin," Anders mobilizes the discursive resources and the moral rhetoric of that institution. In Anders's congregation it is enough to invoke the term to argue convincingly. Institutions like the church, the armed forces, or the welfare state are powerful agents in the creation and maintenance of discursive practices in modern society. From a sociocultural perspective, this implies that institutions play a vital role for individual moral rhetoric ( Adelswärd & Säljö, 1994).

Interviewer A tries to argue against this absolutistic view of the concept of sin. She even hints at the possibility that Anders could commit a sin by refusing to help his fellowmen. She argues from another institutional perspective, although more vague in its contours, relying on language and arguments that also are institutionally grounded and collective in nature. The interaction in fact becomes a dialogue between different institutional realities drawing on the moral rhetoric of two institutions. The interlocutors in this interview, Interviewer A and Anders, can, in Goffman ( 1981 ) terms, be regarded as voicing two different principles-one that of the Church, the other that of the Conscientious Objectors' Board. Or, rather, the Board has a rationality of testing and opposition as the interviewer chooses a principle that will contradict the applicant.

In the next example, Example 2, we meet Johan, who is shy and verbally hesitant, speaking in a low voice. Interviewer B does not use reformulations as much as the other interviewers and refrains from interpretive suggestions and leading questions. She often poses direct questions of a when-what-how character, then she waits for an answer, repeats or varies the question, waits for a new answer, and continues with the next

question. Interviewer B employs different means of solving the problem of the potential aggressiveness of this style, such as metacommunicative remarks about her professional role, encouraging comments at awkward moments, and mitigating laughter. Her interviews are not at all as lengthy as those with interviewer A, so in Example 2 the whole sequence, including the final turns, is presented.

We can see how difficult it is for the interviewer to live up to the ideals set by the Guide ( 1987 ), that is, to not present the applicant with detailed descriptions of a concrete situation. The scene is set: a wall, a group of people lined up, and an enemy soldier. Johan recognizes the moral dilemma (lines 13-14) and tries different solutions (i.e., different lines of possible action). Three times he, more or less jokingly, suggests actions like shouting, or running up to the aggressor (lines 12, 23, 31). He also tries to avoid the dilemma by claiming that it is not his to solve, as the action is the choice of the aggressor (lines 22-23, 28-29). He then formulates a principle (lines 36-38) along the line of It is wrong to be so sure that you are right that you are entitled to kill. As a principle, it is not very clearly phrased, so the interviewer asks him to be more explicit. He cannot. She accepts this and refrains from making a reformulation.

When she finally asks him to summarize his standpoint, he simply says that he finds the thought of weapons and killing horrible and softly cries. The fact that Johan cries can be interpreted as a sign of his great emotional strain, of his frustration at having to explain issues that to him are self-evident. However, it can also be interpreted as a sign of his serious commitment. He does not have institutionally grounded resources of the kind Anders did (note his disclaimer on lines 46-47 that his request is not "on account of Christian grounds"), but he can still convince the interviewer of his serious concern and honesty.

The whole procedure of an evaluative interview as the basis for an evaluation of whether a person is "genuine" and trustworthy could of course be questioned, but this is seldom done in our type of modern society. The sequence where Johan starts to cry in response to the interviewer can illustrate the problem of what the expression "serious convictions" stands for. According to Collins ( 1988 ), Goffman sees the self as an archetypical but still modern myth. We are forced to have individual selves because in Western societies we are expected to interact socially as if that were the case. Society makes us present ourselves as honest and consistent. Yet that same society forces us to act in different--partly oppositional--roles and can therefore make us seem dishonest, inconsistent, and vague.

The self is real only as a symbol, a linguistic concept that we use to account for what we and other people do. It is an ideology of everyday life, used to attribute causality and moral responsibility in our society, just as in societies with a denser (e.g. tribal) structure, moral responsibility is not placed within the individual but attributed to spirits or gods. (Collins, 1988, p. 50)

In order for the applicant to "prove" that he follows a moral code so strictly that it is probable (to the Board) that he will not fulfill his service, he could show himself either as ideologically and intellectually consistent or as very emotional. He has to present an "honest soul."

That Johan in Example 2 was crying can also be seen as an example of the clash between institutional and everyday morality. For a layperson, morality is embedded in his everyday life. He sees and evaluates his actions from the perspective of his own life conditions (cf. Linell & Jönsson, 1991), but he may not be able to spell out his moral norms in clear terms. Cognitive, emotional, and moral aspects may not always be easily distinguishable. However, the interviewer is searching for a clear, verbalized proposition that she, in turn, can use to back her recommendation to approve or deny the application.

In the interviews studied in this article, the applicant not only has to show that he can verbally formulate the right views and that he can present a coherent argumentation, he also has to convince the interviewer about his sincerity. Although Johan's resistance to weapons and killing is shared by many people in Sweden, Johan cannot rely on an obvious principle like Anders, who can revert to his Church.

Whereas Johan comments in Example 2, lines 46-47, that he is not applying for alternative civilian service on Christian grounds, in the next example, Example 3, we meet Magnus, whose Christian faith is very strongly expressed. Interviewer C has yet another way of conducting the interviews as compared to the two previous ones. She formulates and suggests answers to a great degree; her strategy could roughly be characterized as very "helpful." When reading this example, it is important to know that Magnus speaks with a heavy dialect. This may, in fact, increase his credibility as this particular dialect can be associated with rural areas with traditional pietistic ideals. There is rhetorical power in prosody and some dialects are traditionally seen to embody honesty.

This segment demonstrates that it is too simplistic to construe what is happening in the interview as a matter of the applicant presenting his faith and his arguments and the interviewer listening and recording what is being said. By posing questions that initiate new aspects of the topic and by reacting to answers, the interviewer is an active co-teller of the story that the applicant presents. Interviewer C intervenes in the story with comments and questions on how God can act and if he can perform miracles; she actively contributes to the moral position articulated by the applicant.

Here, we seem to have two people speaking from similar positions, using similar moral rhetoric. Another way to put it is to claim that both Magnus and the interviewer are voicing the same principle. In Example 3, line 26, the interviewer suggests a solution to the dilemma. The solution is God's intervention. Compare this to the treatment of the same argument in Example 1 in which Interviewer A in Example 1a, lines 31, 33, and 35, first sounds slightly amused when the topic is first introduced but quickly leaves it when she realizes that Anders is serious. There is no way of knowing whether Interviewer C in reality belongs to a similar Christian denomination as Magnus. What we can see from this sequence is that Interviewer C is familiar with the moral rhetoric of this particular denomination. She seems genuinely interested in hearing about the miracle, and in lines 28-29 she even suggests that there is no dilemma; if you trust God you do not have any difficulties--there is only one path to take. In fact, she withdraws the dilemma and guides Magnus to the

right answer. In line 71 she uses the special terminology "born again," indexing his familiarity with a certain Christian rhetoric. In one sense this sequence shows two participants representing the same institution.

For the interviewer, the moral dilemma is not a personal matter, in fact, not even a moral question. She has routinized ways of dealing with the assessment of whether the applicant is a trustworthy representative of a certain position. For some applicants, it is also a matter of routine. Magnus and Anders both distance themselves from the personal dilemma by transferring it to the Church. To them, the dilemma becomes depersonalized in a way and easily solvable in the light of their faith. They are searching for a word, a commandment for instance, to make further argumentation unnecessary. Naturally, this is what all applicants do. They all search for the "right" utterance or suitable argument for the occasion. For some applicants, though, the institutionally grounded base for the argument makes it more acceptable.

Interviewer D in the next example, Example 4, usually uses a strategy more in line with that of Interviewer A, a seemingly confrontational strategy with the help of explicit objections and counterarguments. However, in the following sequence she is rather nonconfrontational.

In Example 4, line 16, the interviewer makes a reformulation of the principle used by Sten in solving the dilemma. He would shoot the aggressor; he finds saving many people the fight thing to do. Sten also tries to meet the institution on its own ground and gets involved in a counterargument. He places more importance on the number of people

he can save than on their nationalities and claims that this is probably not the case within the armed forces. In lines 50-51 the interviewer is eager to position herself outside this system.

Interviewer D uses the strategy of presenting her individual thoughts and reflection to a greater degree than the other interviewers. She refers to her own life and her own experiences and introduces a personal perspective into the interview in another instance when she discusses at length her views on an American film about Vietnam ( Platoon). She seems to give the applicant personal treatment. It could, however, be seen as a way of solving the problem of performing many communicative tasks at the same time. In order to do her job properly, that is, to get the applicant to talk freely, she finds it effective to speak with a personal voice, to be an author, in Goffman ( 1981 ) sense. The individualized treatment is thus, in fact, also routinized; it is a "routine beyond the routine" as J. R. Bergmann (personal communication, October 1995 ) has phrased it.

The final discussion returns to two issues that were raised earlier: the interviews as moral argumentations and the interrelation of institutional and personal moral discourse. Some reflections on the possible causes of the death of this institution, or at least its abandonment as an institutional tool, are also offered.

The interviews studied are a special form of argumentation. Only one person is actually explicitly arguing, that is, advocating an opinion. As we have seen, the interviewer plays a fairly neutral role, even though she sometimes challenges the views of the applicant. The climate is more inquiring than adversarial. The interviews are, at least for the interviewers, routinized situations in which the applicant is supposed to stick to his arguments, to show inflexibility and firmness, rather than flexibility and openness. In order to be a "true" conscientious objector, one is required to exhibit consistency. The difference between the institutionalized argumentation in the interviews studied and ordinary, everyday argumentation becomes especially sharp in the light of the hypothetical questions. These sequences--virtually about life and death--are closed off rather abruptly by the interviewers at specific points, which could be called points of

satisfaction from the perspective of the interviewer. The interviews studied are not open conversations in which the participants argue in all seriousness in order to throw light on an existential problem. The practical problem for the interviewer is solved when she has heard enough to be able to make a recommendation. Then she is satisfied and closes the topic.

The argumentative aspects of the interviews studied are complex in other respects as well. The interlocutors argue for what they consider the right or wrong ideas, but they also argue that they are honest people. In studies dealing with argumentation theory and logical or philosophical aspects of arguments, arguments are understood as sequences of statements in which some are premises and others are conclusions. According to such studies, the argumentation is evaluated by ascertaining whether the premises and propositions are true and whether the conclusion follows deductively from them. The propositions are studied detached from the ongoing interaction as well as from the larger social context. In studies of actual interaction, for example, the interviews studied, we are not so much concerned with truth as with acceptability and trustworthiness. An acceptable argument is always relative, acceptable for someone and uttered by someone. The uttered argument gains in acceptability if the producer of the argument is seen as trustworthy. For the applicant, it is not only a matter of presenting the "right" argument but also of presenting an honest self.

Discursive resources are moblilized by many establishment institutions in Sweden, such as the Church or the school. What many applicants say echoes arguments embedded in a broad social context in which there is a large degree of consensus. For instance, families and day care centers teach young people that "violence is no way to solve problems." Swedish parents are prohibited by law to hit--and spank--their children. It could also be claimed that the applicants could reflect other argumentative resources of a special kind. The conscientious objectors⁷ are organized and have established formal associations. Before the abandoning of the interview procedure, they gave courses, issued pamphlets, and distributed the questions from the Guide (1987) together with analytic comments on the implications of the questions. Even if not all applicants for alternative civilian service came in contact with any of these organizations and the intellectual resources they offered for resisting combat roles in military service, it is evident that the individual drew on institutionalized counterresources.

The kind of morality examined in the dialogues focusing on the hypothetical situations--the moral dilemmas--is a non-case-specific mo

rality underpinning notions such as "consistency" and "religious beliefsystems." The generalized, reflective, and even fictitious level on which the interviewers try to keep the discussion can be seen as a way for the institution to make the discussion less morally loaded and more fair to everybody. However, at the same time the institution must become aware of the fact that they are not really talking about what the law suggested should be discussed--the inner moral convictions of a situated individual. This insight--or suspicion--may have contributed to the abandoning of this institutional tool.

One can only speculate as to the reasons for abandoning the interview procedure in 1991. The legitimacy of the procedure had been discussed for a long time during the 1970s and 1980s in the media and within the political parties. The fairly general antimilitary attitude from the 1960s gave way to a more positive view of military service among young men. Thus, a context of conflict and distrust changed into one characterized by comparatively more consensus and trust. It was thought that the interview procedures no longer fit the contemporary requirements of national service selection, and finally, there was a political unity about the need to simplify the procedures for the individual as well as for the system. There were also those within the military system (as told to me by several high-ranking officers) who felt that they did not want to be troubled by "boys who are afraid of weapons, unhappy or unstable," especially at a time when the armed forces had to cut down on personnel and reduce costs.⁸

However, the present analysis also suggests that there are reasons for changing the procedure that are related to dilemmas within the evaluative interviews themselves. These are characterized by a number of built-in problems. How are the interviewers to find the applicant's true self when they are active participants in and coauthors of the decision making? Everyday morality is most often not characterized by consistency, yet consistency seems to be a persuasive ground for decision in the context of the interview. On the one hand, everyday morality is situated morality, and thus the interview procedures, based on hypothetical situations, can be regarded as a worthless test. On the other hand, people are capable of a moral calculus, that is, to think about the consequences of their actions in hypothetical situations in order to decide the moral worth of a possible act.

The analyses so far suggest that interviews with conscientious objectors are complex arenas in which different frames, and thus different

moral rhetorics, are embedded in the dialogue (i.e., personal convictions, systems of faiths, the rationalities of the democratic system). They also point out that there are not only several moral dilemmas presented to the interlocutors but also different but simultaneous argumentative work being done--such as the applicant arguing for his rights, the interviewer arguing for her professionalism as well as her personal decency, and the coconstruction of the evaluative procedures as emblematic of a democratic society.

The moral focus of the question of alternative civilian service has shifted from questioning the validity of the individual's moral convictions concerning military service to society's right to use certain kinds of evaluative procedures as an instrument. Another way of putting this is to claim that the perspective on conscientious objectors of the kind discussed in this article has gone through a process of change. First, the law before 1978 implies that a recognition of "deep moral conflict" for an individual is unproblematic. The law after 1978 recognizes this as a problem, and the depth of individual moral convictions are no longer the issue for testing the validity of the interviewers' decisions. Instead, the law demands a pragmatic evaluation of the problem of whether or not the individual will complete the terms of service. Finally, the interview procedure itself is represented as problematic and abandoned. The stringent requirement on the individual to express a moral argument in public terms has given way to a procedure in which the moral basis of the decision remains a personal rather than a social feature of the process.

This process of moral accountability, these constant moral dynamics between the perspectives of the individual and of the system fluctuates, as it were, between a backgrounding, or a "demoralization," of the individual's standpoint and inner convictions and a foregrounding, or a "remoralization," of the professional practice and the procedure itself.