Studying the French Military: Navigating Secrecy in the Entire Research Process

This communication, based on my research experience during my PhD, offers to reflect on the methodological challenges posed by secrecy. While various literatures have dealt with this issue, relatively studies explicitly examine its impact across the entire research process and offer practical strategies for addressing it.

In my research, which focuses on the use of numbers within the French Ministère des Armées and the British Ministry of Defence, secrecy was a persistent concern at all stages of inquiry: prior to data collection, during fieldwork, and in post-research dissemination. Before the fieldwork, navigating secrecy required understanding the inner workings of these organizations, negotiating access, and anticipating practitioners’ apprehensions. During research, it influenced how I gathered information, interpreted organizational processes, and worked within the boundaries practitioners set around classified information. After the research, the handling of sensitive data and sharing findings presented additional challenges. However, depending on the context, secrecy proved less obstructive than anticipated.

To address these dynamics, I will focus on interviews, the primary source where these issues were most prominent. My objectives are twofold. First, I aim to contribute to existing methodological discussions on military research by conceptualizing secrecy as a social construct shaped by human interactions, everyday routines, and organizational interests, rather than as an inherently impenetrable barrier (Daho et al., 2020). Second, and related, I aim to offer and discuss pragmatic advice on how to manage secrecy at various stages of the research process.